1962/04/01 by Alan Dundes · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices #Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
paper · doi:10.2307/538171
openalex publication_date 1962/04/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/03
TRADITIONALLY, the study of folklore in general and folktales in particular has tended to be diachronic rather than synchronic. The emphasis has clearly been upon the genesis and development of folkloristic materials rather than upon the structure of these materials. Folklorists of the late nineteenth century were much more concerned with how folklore came into being than with what folklore was. Genetic explanations were considered sufficient to define the nature of folklore. Thus the solar mythologists claimed that the bulk of folkloristic materials was primitive man's poetic translation of celestial phenomena such as the rising and setting of the sun. After the eclipse of solar mythology as Richard M. Dorson has so felicitously phrased it,1 there came the Anthropological School. The members of this group were convinced that folklore evolved from historical facts and primordial customs. In the course of the unilinear evolution of all cultures, there were preserved vestigial remains of the archaic origins. These remains were termed survivals in culture, and the study of these survivals was called folklore. The modern version of this form of diachronic study is fostered by the advocates of the myth-ritual theory who claim that all myth evolves from ritual. Since no attempt is made to explain the ultimate origin of the ritual, one can see that the question of genesis has been dropped in favor of the question of evolutionary development. Similarly, in the most modern method of folklore study, the so-called Finnish historical-geographical method, questions of ultimate origin are eschewed. The aim of this method is the delineation of the complete life history of a particular tale.2 The users of the historical-geographical method attempt to determine the paths of dissemination and the process of development of folkloristic materials. By assembling all the known versions of a particular tale, the folklorist seeks to reconstruct the hypothetical original form of the tale. There is, however, no attempt to explain how this original form may have come into being in the first place. Thus there has been a movement away from the early interest in genesis and cause towards an interest in the process of transmission and evolutionary development. But in any case, the study of folklore has remained diachronic. All three approaches to folklore-the mythological, the anthropological, and the historical-geographical-are alike not only in that they are diachronic, but also in that they are comparative. All three utilize materials from many cultures. This was why it became apparent to folklorists, no matter which of these approaches they favored, that for comparative studies there had to be some convenient means of referring to individual parts or pieces of folkloristic items as well as to these items as wholes. In the second place, in order to have trustworthy comparison, one needed to operate with comparable units. This was particularly important to the members of the Finnish school inasmuch as it was precisely the differences of some of the smaller units of a given folktale upon which the conclusions of a historical-geographical study were often based. Unfortunately, the system of units which was developed was primarily intended to answer only the first need, that is, of supplying a means of