WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2013-02-11DOI: 10.5860/choice.50-6266
Elizabeth Wayland Barber
{"title":"The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance","authors":"Elizabeth Wayland Barber","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-6266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-6266","url":null,"abstract":"From southern Greece to northern Russia, people have long believed in female spirits, bringers of fertility, who spend their nights and days dancing in the fields and forests. So appealing were these spirit-maidens that they also took up residence in nineteenth-century Romantic literature. Archaeologist and linguist by profession, folk dancer by avocation, Elizabeth Wayland Barber has sleuthed through ethnographic lore and archaeological reports of east and southeast Europe, translating enchanting folktales about these \"dancing goddesses\" as well as eyewitness accounts of traditional rituals-texts that offer new perspectives on dance in agrarian society. She then traces these goddesses and their dances back through the Romans and Greeks to the first farmers of Europe. Along the way, she locates the origins of many customs, including coloring Easter eggs and throwing rice at the bride. The result is a detective story like no other and a joyful reminder of the human need to dance.","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2013-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71142361","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2012-10-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.49-2036
Steve Siporin
{"title":"From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways","authors":"Steve Siporin","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-2036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-2036","url":null,"abstract":"From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways. By Ellen F. Steinberg and Jack H. Prost. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Pp. ? + 207, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, appendix, notes, bibliography, index. $32.95 cloth.)A silver Hanukkah menorah (chanukkiah) with nine upright ears of golden corn in place of candles graces the cover of From the Jewish Heartland: Two Centuries of Midwest Foodways. This image is beguiling, attractive- even a bit wry - and it suggests an engaging theme: the unique but appropriate melding of Jewish tradition with Midwestern culture, perhaps the expression of Jewish identity through the adaptation of Midwestern foods. The cover entices the reader to open the book and learn about the substance of this artistically hypothesized synthesis.But if you are looking for analysis and theory, for a clear definition of what makes Midwestern Jewish foodways Midwestern (or Jewish) or what they might tell us about Jewish life and identity in the heartland over the course of the past two hundred years, you may be disappointed. On the other hand, if you are looking for celebration, nostalgia, evocative description, entfiusiasm, traditional recipes, and convincing restaurant recommendations, you may find a lot here to like.In spite of the corn on the cover, the word corn does not appear in the index (unless you count \"corned\" beef) . One apparently \"hybrid\" food Steinberg and Prost do mention is \"corn rye,\" also called \"tzizel bread,\" a bakery-produced loaf of rye bread heavily dusted with cornmeal, perhaps originating in St. Louis (134). Maybe corn is intended only as a symbol of the heartland and it is too literal of me to look for dishes that actually use corn; but as I read familiar East European, German, and even Sephardic recipes, I wondered if heartland Jewish foodways consist only of \"survivals\" from \"the old country,\" or if there actually were any hybrid dishes (besides corn rye) that combine identities symbolically. I was hoping to learn other ways to uiink about Midwestern Jewish foodways besides survivals.But I'm not yet done with corn. I grew up in a Jewish family that observed kashrut in Omaha, Nebraska. (Omahans consider dieir city to be witfiin die Midwest's core even if Steinberg and Prost do not [1].) Besides summer meals in which corn on die cob was die main dish, we also ate corn bread and corn fritters. If Jewish foodways only means survivals of old world dishes, these dishes obviously don't count, but die reality was that diese corn-based dishes were central parts, even main dishes, of dairy only (milchidik) suppers, which always seemed to be a challenge for my modier given die \"meat and potatoes\" expectation of Midwestern meals. So, are corn on the cob, cornbread, and corn fritters not Midwest Jewish dishes? Not because Jews eat diem but because diey may have subdy articulated (I can't speak for more dian my own family) the Jewishness of meals through dieir conscious use in ob","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2012-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71135960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2012-04-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.49-1906
Julie Henigan
{"title":"Child's Unfinished Masterpiece: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads","authors":"Julie Henigan","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-1906","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-1906","url":null,"abstract":"Child's Unfinished Masterpiece: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. By Mary Ellen Brown. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011. Pp. xi + 296, acknowledgments, preface, illustrations, appendices, bibliography, index. $45.00 cloth.)Ballad studies have been a staple of folklore and literary studies since Frances James Child and his students introduced the subject in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with Child's monumental collection The English and Scottish Popular Ballads as its touchstone - and sometimes its raison d'etre. Numerous articles have been published on Child's collection, as well as on his presumed assumptions, but curiously diese assumptions - and any major study of Child and his work - have had to wait until now for the kind of elucidation Mary Ellen Brown brings to bodi subjects in her latest book.In it, Child receives the same kind of careful and sympathetic treatment Brown has given to those otfier giants of traditional balladry and song, William Motherwell and Robert Burns. Brown's scholarly method is admirable, consisting as it does of careful attention to primary sources (in what she describes as an enterprise of \"historical etfinography\") , in combination with an intelligent assessment and synthesis of these sources. Drawing on letters, diaries, and even account books for information, she offers a diorough examination of Child's collection in the context of his life and the collaboration it entailed. She has structured the book to deal with her major concerns: Child's life, the nature and history of the ESPB, a description of Child's major transadantic collaborators (or \"army of auxiliaries,\" as she calls them), the completion of the collection after Child's death by his student George Lyman Kittredge, and a \"posdude,\" in which she examines Child's concept of what, for him, constituted a ballad.While presenting her chapter-lengdi biography of Child as a mere sketch, Brown has provided the most comprehensive treatment of his life to date. Breadiing life into her subject chiefly by way of correspondence and diaries, she allows us to see a man loved and respected by teachers, colleagues, friends, students, and family: a multi-faceted human being who exhibited not only painstaking attention to his work but who also lavished tenderness and care on the people in his life - as well as on his beloved roses. No self-absorbed pedant, he was a man with deep-rooted affections, political views (he was an abolitionist) - and a playful, sometimes wry sense of humor. This, in spite of his and his wife's continual healdi problems, four children, lectures, a heavy work load as a professor at Harvard - and, of course, the ballad collection.We also gain a better appreciation for how Child's interest in ballads, which at first shared a rival fascination with Chaucer, grew from English and Scottish Ballads - part of a series, British Poets, for which he edited the volume on Spenser as well. While the ballad volume drew ","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2012-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71135048","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2012-01-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.48-2485
Moriah Hart
{"title":"From Mud to Jug: The Folk Potters and Pottery of Northeast Georgia","authors":"Moriah Hart","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-2485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-2485","url":null,"abstract":"From Mud to Jug: The Folk Potters and Pottery of Northeast Georgia. By John A. Burrison. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. Pp. ix + 161 forward, preface, acknowledgements, notes, books on Southern Folk Pottery, Index of Potters. $29.95 paper.)The art of shaping clay and hardening it with fire has been practiced for 30,000 years (the Dolni Vestonici figures from die Czech Republic are dated 25,00029,000). Libraries have shelves of books on ceramics found as part of archeological digs, the ceramics of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Chinese ceramics, delftware, Mesoamerican pre-Columbian ceramics and many others. From Mud to Jug: The Folk Potters and Pottery of Northeast Georgia by John Burrison joins other notable books in the field of American pottery such as Charles Zug's Turners and Burners: The Folk Potters of North Carolina and Burrison 's earlier masterpiece Brothers in Mud: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery.This slim volume was written as a sequel and necessary update to the living tradition introduced in Brothers in Mud and as a companion to the exhibition curated by die author at die Folk Pottery Museum of Nordieast Georgia. In his new work, Burrison leads readers through die historic development of die craft in die region, explores die changing landscape of folk pottery and introduces die newest generation of die \"clay clans\" living die art of clay. Aldiough Burrison writes in die introduction that die book is \"intended for a non specialist audience\" (xvii) it is not missing die scholarly insight of die earlier work. It is an insightful and respectful introduction to die field of American ceramics for die non-specialist and an update to Brothers in Mud and die continually evolving field of American folk pottery for scholars in the field.The author has a long history in die field without being a ceramicist himself. His first book introducing die history of pottery in the region, Brothers in Mud, was written in 1983. Since diat time Burrison has continued to develop relationships with his collaborators, taking the path from outsider professor to treasured friend through his long work in the field, showing in this book \"cooperation between scholarship and art\" (xiii) .I have taken a similar path to that of Burrison, just in reverse; I found the study of folklore through my work as a potter. I was very excited when I opened the wrapper and found this very attractive book. The photos are enticing as a visual accompaniment to the written word. Archival black and white photos and color photos provide a visual chronology to the continuing development of the craft and the culture of clay in the region. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2012-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71132023","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2011-07-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.47-3590
Gustavo Ponce
{"title":"Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes: The Ambivalence of Mexican American Identity in Literature and Film","authors":"Gustavo Ponce","doi":"10.5860/choice.47-3590","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.47-3590","url":null,"abstract":"Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes: The Ambivalence of Mexican American Identity in Literature and Film. By Juan J. Alonzo. (University of Arizona Press, 2009. Pp. x +208, introduction, epilogue, photographs, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 cloth.)Juan J. Alonzo 's Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes looks at Chicano(a) Studies through the lens of literature and film. This interdisciplinary approach allows the author to formulate convincing arguments regarding Chicano(a) identity and its contingency on and rejection of stereotypes. Alonzo argues that stereotypes are a social construct that need to be studied within the theoretical framework of ambivalence. By examining stereotypes from the perspective of ambivalence, the author moves the discussion of stereotypes from an essentially structuralist understanding of the term to a more complex reading of this social phenomenon. This idea of ambivalence toward Mexicans in American film and literature, from the late nineteenth century up to the Chicano(a) films of the new millennium, runs deep throughout the book. In fact, the concept of ambivalence, and how it manifests differently in the works of various Anglo-American authors and auteurs, forms the backbone of Alonzo's book.Alonzo's research material not only helps illustrate ambivalence at work, but also showcases the author's breadth of knowledge and mastery of a wide range of disciplines. He carefully selects examples from American cinema, western novels, and other American genres - including early American plays, theater reviews, newsprint articles, and hard-to-find films from Hollywood's nascent period - that incorporate Mexican characters in their plots in order to objectify, extoll, or denigrate them, further reinforcing his argument about ambivalence. By culling from such varied sources, the author is able to trace the origins of some of these negative/positive stereotypes about Mexicans.Alonzo's book is a must read for anyone interested in Chicano(a) history and ethnic studies in general. This book would also appeal to scholars focusing on the construction of stereotypes in Greater American cinema and literature. The book itself provides some interesting photographs depicting American and British actors impersonating \"Mexicans\" in Hollywood. From these snapshots and the chapters that follow, Alonzo traces a history of attitudes (i.e., acceptance/rejection, tolerance/abhorrence, attraction/repulsion) that some Americans have shown toward people of Mexican origin. From the often contradictory or ambivalent depictions of Mexicans by D.W. Griffith in movies such as The Greaser's Gauntlet (1908), to the more amicable and humane literary renditions of Jack London's \"The Mexican,\" Stephen Crane's \"One Dash-Horses,\" and \"The Three White Mice,\" Alonzo challenges readers and spectators to revisit these early works and question any preconceived ideas they might have regarding the work of these giants of American film and literature. By venturing into th","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2011-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71128188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2011-07-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.47-1914
S. Sackett
{"title":"Life Flows on in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History","authors":"S. Sackett","doi":"10.5860/choice.47-1914","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.47-1914","url":null,"abstract":"Life Flows on in Endless Song: Folk Songs and American History. By Robert V. Wells. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 245, preface, notes, select bibliography and discography, index. $25.00 paper.)The teacher of American history looking for a collateral reading book to assign students will not find it in Life Flows on in Endless Song. Robert Wells is clear about his purpose: \"My intent here is ... to explain how a social historian/folk singer has come to understand the songs and what they tell about American history\" (xi). His engaging book succeeds admirably in the first of these goals. He is less successful in explaining \"what they tell about American history.\"To begin with, as Wells is fully aware, \"few folk songs had much to say about national politics\" (Lomax in Wells, 4). \"The bulk of the historical record used to reconstruct our past was produced by wealthy and powerful people\" (6). For fhese and other reasons, \"in any work in which the primary focus is on the songs, a topical organization should prevail\" (199). So far, so good. And it would be difficult to find fault with Wells's choice of topics: courtship and family life, religion and war, work, transportation, migration, and crime. The devil, as drey say, is in the details.Wells writes that, \"Between fhe eighteenth and twentiefh centuries, Americans experienced profound revolutions in the most intimate aspects of their lives and the values they attached to their actions. Folk songs comment on many of these changes\" (11). Thus Wells announces a theme of \"Careless Love,\" the well-tided chapter on courtship and family life. Two pages later he writes, \"Over fhe course of several centuries, relationships and power within families changed noticeably. Folksongs often hint at these changes and occasionally comment directly on them\" (13). Surely, then, we have a right to expect here, if nowhere else, a chronological account of the changes and how they are reflected in folksong. We don't get it. We do get interesting and insightful discussions of individual songs, but we do not get any attempt to fit them into the pattern to which Wells has alluded.While it might seem strange to lump religion and war into a single chapter, Wells uses \"The Batde Hymn of the Republic\" as mortar to hold them together. He is fairly successful in showing how folksongs reflect the First and Second Great Awakenings and then how folksongs reflect one war after another (though certainly not all of America's wars) . The only difficulty here is the inclusion of \"The Ballad of Schenectady,\" about a colonial war in 1690. Wells admits that it is \"Litde remembered and probably seldom sung\" (54), and it does not seem to fit the four criteria for folksongs that Wells adumbrates on page 7. (The four criteria are (1) oral transmission, (2) what G. Malcolm Laws called an \"unaffected style,\" (3) non-commercial performance, and (4) variant versions. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2011-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71127290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2011-04-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.46-0793
Philippe Nusbaum
{"title":"Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens","authors":"Philippe Nusbaum","doi":"10.5860/choice.46-0793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.46-0793","url":null,"abstract":"Working Girl Blues: The Life and Music of Hazel Dickens. By Hazel Dickens and Bill C. Malone. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 102, acknowledgements, biography, songs and memories, discography, index, illustrations. $ 17.95 paper.)Working Girl Blues is a fine book that documents the connection between a bluegrass musician's life and her songs. Hazel Dickens is a songwriter and bluegrass musician whose work has been widely performed and recorded. Bill C. Malone is a scholar and musician with important books to his credit: Country Music USA and Don't Get Above your RaisinCountry Music and the Southern Working Class.The text of Working Girl Blues is divided into two major sections. The first thirty pages are devoted to Hazel's biography, written by Bill C. Malone. In the biographical section, readers learn about her West Virginia family, their poverty, and search for better economic opportunities, Hazel's loves, and the struggles of a female bluegrass musician in a field dominated by good old boys. The final fifty-five or so pages contain the lyrics of Hazel's compositions, with Hazel's commentary about each song. She tells of the inspirations for the songs, her artistic struggles, and, in general, the experiences the songs reflect. The lock between the two sections is effective. In her section, Dickens refers to themes of her life that Malone touches on, but fills out the narrative with additional information. She tells it in a way that seems close to her speaking voice, and it makes the writing come to life.Many books about bluegrass assume that an artist's song selections or compositions somehow reflect the artist's attitude or experience, or that it somehow represents a shared community aesthetic. In Working Girl Blues, the connection between lived experience and composition is one of the main thrusts of the book. For example, Malone's biography tells that Hazel was a sickly child who, at about the age of three months, would not drink milk. The Mercer County, WV, doctor pronounced he'd done all he could do to treat Hazel's problem. Hazel's mother, Sarah, was a shy woman who rarely left her home place. However, despite her shyness, Sarah carried Hazel to the nearest big place to see a baby doctor. There she received the help that pulled Hazel through. Readers eventually learn how this episode in Hazel's early life inspired two of her songs: \"Mama's Hand\" and \"Carry Me Across the Mountain.\" Hazel comments on the special bond between herself and her mother, and the lyrics of these songs amply reinforce the point.Showing how new songs reflect life is important, because it demonstrates how a traditional songwriter combines a handed-down musical system with experience to create new work that fits a current scene. Working Girl Blues demonstrates that bluegrass is more than a collection of handed-down musical ideas that are assembled into pieces, but a vibrant musical form that artists shape to the circumstances of their lives.Worki","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2011-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71121653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2010-07-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.46-0373
M. Macdonald
{"title":"Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit","authors":"M. Macdonald","doi":"10.5860/choice.46-0373","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.46-0373","url":null,"abstract":"Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit. By Jo-ann Archibald/ Q'um Q'um Xiiem. (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 176, preface, acknowledgments, bibliography, index. $99.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.)In this insightful look into the storywork of Coast Salish and Sto:loo elders, Jo-Ann Archibald combines traditional ways of looking at story with a scholarly approach to documentation of her sources. She tells us she wanted \"to demonstrate that Indigenous knowledge systems could be investigated from an Indigenous perspective with rigour acceptable to the academy\" (5).Archibald is Associate Dean for Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Education at die University of British Columbia. As a member of the Sto:lo (Coqualeetza) community and a worker in First Nation educational programs, she received trusted story knowledge from elders. Working from what must have been countless hours of interviews, she examines the uses of story in those communities. She coins the term \"storywork\" to describe the way story is used to reach the hearts of listeners. Storywork is required of both the teller and the listener in order to make meaning happen. She quotes the elders, who say that listening requires \"three ears: two on the sides of our head and one that is in our heart\" (8).Archibald spends much time talking about her relationship to the communities she studies, and she explains the extremely careful way in which stories were set down. During the collection of stories for a First Nations Journeys of Justice curriculum project, curriculum elders read over the transcripts of their stories and were able to demand rewriting until they were satisfied that the words echoed their own. Each page had to be signed by the teller as evidence that it had been approved. The rights to the stories remained with the teller, except for the curriculum use.Archibald includes texts for two First Nations stories and summarizes two more, but this is not a tale collection. She is interested in how and why stories are told. She particularly examines the potential use of traditional story in the educauon of today's First Nations children.Mentors guided her work: Chief Khot-La-Cha, Dr. Simon Baker, Tsimilano, Dr. Vincent Stogan, Kwulasulwut, and Dr. Ellen White. Chapter 1 talks about the teachings she had from them. She references as well the thinking of many other First Nation scholars. Chapter 3 reveals the insights Archibald gained into storywork from working with members of the Stori Nation, especially with the Coqualeetza Elders at Sardis, British Columbia. Learning to listen with patience, Archibald spent much time with these elders, recording their wisdom on tape and in her journal. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2010-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71121569","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
WESTERN FOLKLOREPub Date : 2010-07-01DOI: 10.5860/choice.46-3177
B. Ellis
{"title":"The Devil Notebooks","authors":"B. Ellis","doi":"10.5860/choice.46-3177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.46-3177","url":null,"abstract":"The Devil Notebooks. By Laurence A. Rickels. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Pp. xiii + 380, introduction, references, filmography. $75.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.)This formless-seeming book, divided into twenty-six \"notebooks\" that often read like rough lecture notes, presents and explicates narratives relating to the folk/ popular culture theme of Satan-worship. The plots range from high fiction (Dante's Inferno and Milton's Paradise Lost) to respectable popular fiction and film (Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End and William Friedkin's film The Exorcist) to a wide range of frankly forgettable low budget films and pulp novels. Trained as a psychotherapist, Rickels takes a Freudian approach to this body of narrative, arguing that they embody elements of a common human fantasy. The youthful ego, he proposes, negotiates his or her mixed love and fear of one's father by projecting the grossest, most challenging transgressions onto an anti-father archetype, which represents the worst that the imagination can conceive. In so doing, the human mind seeks to \"hit bottom in an underworld that precedes the creation of the world as the bottom line of worldly creation\" (366). That is, once humans are able to fully comprehend the things that nauseate and repel us, we thus can begin to build the foundation for a positive life.In the notebooks, Rickels ranges through many motifs familiar to folklorists, such as the Faustian bargain with the devil (Motif G. 224.4) and the equation of excrement with gold and vice versa, discussed in several places by Alan Dundes (e.g. Dundes and Pagter 1992: 81-83). A number of works discussed, such as the notorious Michelle. Remembers (Smith and Pazder 1981), relate to recent contemporary legends alleging that gruesome murders and alleged ritualistic child abuse are the work of underground satanic cults (Victor 1993, Ellis 2000) . Rickels also observes the frequent crossover between occult themes and \"slasher\" images in film, likewise seen in many legends circulated by adolescents (Danielson 1979). Perceptively, he suggests that the \"cutting\" theme is a way of expressing the essential function of the fantasy itself, which is to excise certain ideas from the human consciousness and cast them onto evil others in the shadowland. By so doing, the mind can allow itself to be gratified by violent, sado-masochistic images while simultaneously rejecting them as the work of unredeemable human devils.The book's postmodern style and format, however, makes it difficult to use as a resource. There is no single place where Rickels previews or explains his argument to his readers, and he assumes that they have a prior familiarity with the works of Freud, to which he often alludes without much prior explanation. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2010-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71123513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}