The idea came about earlier in the year when I heard George Hoyle, SELFS's charming and urbane host, give an introductory talk on John Dee, and it occurred to me that talking about the history of the subject I love might be fun and worthwhile for several people, including me. The more people are fascinated by folklore, the more important it becomes to talk about the history of the subject. What do we mean when we say 'folklore'? And who are the mysterious 'we' in that sentence? Does 'folklore' mean the same in popular usage as it does for folklorists? How do we balance all its various meanings? How do we go about looking at folklore?
I'm not particularly alarmed if that sounds like an intellectual rabbit warren: that's how I think of folklore, which is part of the reason I find it so massively, thrillingly exciting. I am genuinely excited at getting involved in this history.
Folklorists today don't think of their subject in quite the same way as their Victorian forebears. This means getting a handle on what they did think and how it changed.The blurb I sent SELFS gives my starting point:
170 years ago a letter appeared in the Athenaeum. It was signed ‘Ambrose
Merton’, a pseudonym for literary antiquarian William John Thoms, and
it proposed a neologism: ‘folklore’. This provides a good origin story
for the study of folklore – it’s the first time folklorists identify
themselves as such – but while Thoms may have invented the word he
didn’t invent the subject. This talk will be a brief introduction to how
we’ve come to think about folklore. Amongst other things it’ll discuss
what William Thoms meant by the word and how he arrived at that meaning,
and where we’ve taken folklore since. Folklore: we’re all interested in
it, we all do it, let’s think about it.
And what a starting point! It takes you everywhere ... If you're in London on Thursday evening and that sounds as exciting to you as it does to me, come along.
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