What is folklore?
Jun 3rd, 2007 by Glenn
A friend of mine sent me this link to a Mormon Folklore discussion that took place over at Dave’s Mormon Inquiry last January.
The discussion was good but the comments have been closed; otherwise, I would have commented directly on Dave’s site. But there are so many things I want to say that I figured this would be a good place for it. What you see below in quotes comes from Daves’ site. I will interject my comments as I go.
Mormon Folklore
Mix one part storytelling with one part history and a dash of folk doctrine, and you get Mormon folklore. Over the holidays, the Deseret News posted a fine interview with William Wilson, the reigning expert on Mormon folkore. It touches on some of his favorites (missionary stories, Three Nephite stories, and J. Golden Kimball stories) and ends with this Zennish quote: “All the stories are true — it depends on the truth you’re looking for.” Ah, yes. Perhaps you aren’t reading the story; the story is reading you.
The article also references Wilson’s recently published book, The Marrow of Human Experience: Essays on Folklore (USU Press, 2006). Over half the essays in the book are about Mormon folklore, so if you’re into that sort of thing … well, click and buy.
First, I am glad to see William “Bert” Wilson acknowledged as the reigning expert on Mormon folklore. I was lucky enough to work with him in his folklore archives during my last two years at BYU. He pointed me to IU for my graduate studies, and I owe a great deal of who I am to his influence.
Reading the newspaper article, however, I wonder how he would respond. They are always a double-edged sword, those articles. They are meant to be brief and reader-friendly. They don’t delve too deeply into the issues. One-two hours worth of interview is whittled down to a few “sexy” quotes, and that is it.
It is a nice enough article, but too often the term “folklore” is tied only to “stories” — as if the study of folklore was just about the study of stories. Folklore is so much more than that. It is jargon, dialect, riddles, musical tunes, musical instruments, songs, beliefs, thoughts, worldview, rituals, ceremonies, customs, clothing, art, craft, and food, just to name a few. Lore is the essence of human expression. It is very rare to find someone or something that has not been touched by the influence of tradition (the defining ingredient in all of folklore).
With that in mind, I want to turn to some of the comments Dave received when he posted back in January:
Comments
Man I hate that kind of comment. It trivializes the very notion of truth.Comment No. 1 by: Clark Goble | Jan 4, 2007 8:24:52 PM | Permalink
Clark, Elder Knudsen would be right there with you. Any comment that might lump our superior Truth into the mix with all the other so-called-truths from any old Joe (not named “Smith”) is something he hates, too.
I think a problem of folklore is that it seems to be the genre of fiction which most commonly disguises itself as fact. I think it would be more valueable if it came with a disclaimer noting it as an allegory or a parable, etc. To tune the listener for gleaning the value of the story.
I guess there is a good percentage of folklore that has history in it though, and it is a murky line, at best.
Comment No. 3 by: Matt W. | Jan 5, 2007 8:52:19 AM | Permalink
The problem with folklore is that it is usually a distillation of stories handed down through the generations, each generation re-telling the story with a little added something. At a family reunion this last summer my family retold the story of a valued ancestor who “rescued” a handcart company on the Sweetwater River in Wyoming in the late fall of 1849. Family lore had it that our relative was the rescuer while another man was less that heroic, but later got most of the credit. It so happened that a descendent of the “other man” had recently married one of my nephews and she told the story from her families perspective. Of course it was completely different from my family’s perspective. So much for folklore. The “hero” with the most descendants will get the credit. In that case, my family will come out as the family with the hero antecedent.
Comment No. 4 by: Duff | Jan 6, 2007 5:58:10 PM | Permalink
The problem with folklore is that people generally assume that it is inaccurate or false. Sure, there are a lot of stories that have been constructed on faulty or inaccurate information – most likely they are not factually accurate, but they can still represent the “truth” of how a person sees the world. It’s the Obi Wan Kenobi “from a certain point of view” argument.
Does the fact that we have multiple versions of “The First Vision” mean that the story is conclusively false? What about folksongs – does the “folk” make the song false or out of tune? Does the “folk” make folk art a lesser form of art? Does the “folk” in folk foods make the meal less nutritious?
But the REAL problem with folklore is that it is so ingrained into who we are that we don’t really recognize it for what it is. Our truth is THE truth. Our worldview is THE worldview. We think that somehow our thoughts and beliefs are free from the influence of tradition and are therefore free from the errors that other traditions can lead to. I am not so sure.
Hm. I’m not so certain that these descriptions of folklore are all that accurate. Certainly, there are rumors and legends that are folklore, but there is also a tremendous amount of experience and religious belief. IF you go to USU or BYU and crack open the Folklore archive, there are a tremendous amount of stories; all attained by solid ethnographic fieldwork, of which are included many testimonies and first hand recollections.
Comment No. 5 by: J. Stapley | Jan 6, 2007 6:55:01 PM | Permalink
J.: Yes, but “solid ethnographic fieldwork” speaks to what they think, cultural beliefs; not to what really happened in the past, history. That’s why historians prefer historical documents, the more contemporary the better, over memories recounted forty years later, even by eyewitnesses. Recall how Bushman in RSR declined to use those sort of reports about the life of Joseph Smith (although many LDS authors are quite happy to use those sorts of reports).
A couple of other angles on this: Economists have a strong bias against survey data because real data (showing how people actually behave) often tell a different story. There’s also Leone’s book Roots of Modern Mormonism that talks about how incomplete and flawed were the memories of living Mormons about events from thirty or forty years earlier in the Arizona towns that he studied as part of his field work.
So I see folklore as revealing things about those who transmit and retell the stories, and about the culture that such stories become embedded in. I don’t see them as reliable reports of events that actually happened (although in some cases there were events of some sort that intiated a chain of storytelling).
Comment No. 6 by: Dave | Jan 6, 2007 8:07:35 PM | Permalink
I’m not so pessimistic as you, Dave. I think that your comment is applicable to much of what is considered folklore. Contemporary historical documents are indeed, way better; but, better a couple of years later than never. As I didn’t keep much of a journal through-out my life, much of my own life is now folklore.
Comment No. 7 by: J. Stapley | Jan 7, 2007 9:30:59 AM | Permalink
J.Stapley, Well that is the point, isn’t? Folklore isn’t that reliable. What we learned from our parents is colored by their interpretation of what they learned form their parents. The actual truth is most likely lost to history, or non-history’s never-never land.
If we can’t be certain what our grandparents knew, or experienced, how can we be sure of what transpired 2,000 years ago? If we are going to “know” anything, I suggest we use the scientific method, which as Richard Feynman pointed out is simply a process we use to keep us from fooling ourselves.Comment No. 9 by: Duff | Jan 10, 2007 6:12:30 PM | Permalink
This is a great exchange between J. Stapley and Dave and Duff. Each of them have valid points. I am not sure if J. Stapley (comment #5) is lumping “experience and religious belief” with folklore or not (although I think that he should – religious belief is definitely traditional and even our experiences are interpreted through a traditional lens). He may be be getting at the FOAF distinction (Friend of a Friend), measuring the validity of a story on whether it is told as a first-person experience or not. Either way, a folklorist sill considers a first-person personal narrative to be folklore because of the interpretation of the experience, the selection of certain choice details, and the intentional construction of a narrative based upon traditional literary conventions and audience expectations. A personal narrative is folklore. That doesn’t mean it is false.
As for Dave’s comment in #6, I do not have much experience with History as a discipline, but I find it hard to imagine that I would ever come across anyone who has not been influenced by tradition (i.e. by folklore) and it would seem to me that even the most strict historian would be unable to completely strip their account of traditional bias. I could be wrong on that. I agree that folklore reveals “things about those who transmit and retell the stories, and about the culture that such stories become embedded in,” but because of my experience with folklore and ethnography, I tend to approach any human narrative with a grain of suspicion – I don’t expect an un-biased, 100% accurate factual account of what really happened. What I do expect is an accurate account of what the observer perceived – and to me there is significance in the difference.
I know this is a long post, and I congratulate those of you who made it all the way through – if you are ever in Logan, Utah, let me know and I will see that John Dehlin buys you an ice cream cone. 
I enjoyed reading the post at Dave’s Mormon Inquiry and thought there were some very interesting issues raised here. My opinion is certainly not the gold standard when it comes to folklore studies.
What do the rest of you think? When you hear “folklore” are you able to think of things other than stories? Do you think that most of folklore is unreliable and false? Where do you see a value – if any – in folklore? And most importantly — can you see the folklore in you?
Not to mention that historiographical writing now would emphasize that history is not chronology: it is not “the facts,” but rather a relevant and (hopefully) accurate interpretation of selected facts in a coherent narrative. The commenters going after folklore for inaccuracy probably don’t realize that historical writing is subject to the same criticisms. I am not arguing that there aren’t differences between the fields, nor that history isn’t more concerned about the facts, but rather that it is a matter of degree…
Thanks for giving a second life (even an improved second life) to my short original post, Glenn. You might be pleased to know that my Amazon stats show that several people actually went to Amazon and purchased Wilson’s book as a result of my post, suggesting that Mormon folklore is a topic of considerable interest to people.
Whenever I read something like “history is what really happened in the past” I get that tick that inspector Clouseau’s boss had. I know, I know, it’s just because I am a professionally trained historian and this is my pet thing. I admit it. I also understand that Dave probably gets it too, so this isn’t directed at him, but rather at some who might take the wrong message from what he is saying about history. But for the sake of my sanity, let me give a boiled down version of my introductory lecture on “what history is” that is usually reserved for undergraduates in their first course on the “historian’s craft.” The idea that history = what happened in the past is simply false. History is the narrated construction of an interperation of the past made up of various “traces.” These traces are the remnants of the past that have survived (often by dumb luck but frequently through intentional preservation). The process of historical construction is thus at the mercy of chance and/or various biases at several points. First in the creation of “traces” by persons in the past. Second, in the preservation, or not, of those traces. This is a significant point. If records are lost or human sources die without giving testimony, then the events to which these traces would have witnessed become invisible to the historian. They happened, so they are part of the past, but the traces are gone so they are not part of history. Next, in the choices made by the historian in her/his method of examining the traces, the questions posed by the historian to the traces, the narrative structures into which those traces are emplotted by the historian, the hermeneutic interaction between the historian and the traces, which in many cases is informed by cultural ideas so deep that the historian is blind to them. Finally, when the historian has constructed a history out of traces imbedded with all of the potential distortions mentioned above, the narrative is turned over to the reader, who then enters into his/her own complex relationship with the written words of the historian. Whatever folklore is or isn’t, let’s be clear about one thing: saying that history represents the past because it contains “facts” is like saying a pile of bricks and mortar is a mansion.
Dave,
Thank you. You have a great thing going on over at your site. I’m glad the Amazon link has helped Bert out a bit. I remember being in his office one day while he was opening his mail. There were a few checks — one for $12, another for $15. They were residuals from something he had written years before, and he just chuckled about how sometimes the checks weren’t worth the hand-cramps he got signing them. Of course he was never in it for the money, but it is nice to know he is able to reach an audience with his work. It’s valuable stuff.
Costanza,
A pile of bricks… nice. I was glad to see that there is so much resonance between the folklositic take on narrative and the way it is percieved in History. Henry Glassie often wondered outloud why more folklorists did not get involved in History, and vice-versa.
So given the understanding that a historian’s own cultural ideas (biases) are blind to him (yes, him — blatant sexism), what do you make of Mormon’s abridgement of the Nephite histories? I have often wondered how many layers of transmission most of our scirptural stories have gone through (i.e. did Ammon really cut off all those arms, or did a good story get embellished?) Of course that is assuming that the Book of Mormon is exactly what it claims to be, and we don’t even need to go there right now.
There are actually all kinds of interesting questions about narrativity and the Book of Mormon. How, for example, do Book of Mormon narrators manage to reconstruct not only conversations, sermons, prayers, and speeches with putative exactness, but also the thoughts in the heads of individuals sometimes hundreds of years removed from the time of the narrator? I don’t take that as evidence of 19th century origins for the Book of Mormon, but I do think that we have to consider seriously the logistics involved if Mormon (or Nephi, or Moroni) is recreating words and thoughts as they actually happened. There is always the Deus ex machina answer, namely that God provided the Book of Mormon narrators with some type of visionary experience that allowed them to see the past and then record what they saw. But that begs another question: why did God have the Book of Mormon peoples keep records at all?
One thing to keep in mind is that, with the Book of Mormon, we are dealing with a premodern approach to editorial and narrative techniques that had little use for distinction between literal truth and symbolic truth (myth). Many of the stories from the Book of Mormon must have circulated first as oral texts. If such stories underwent the same kind of changes through the process of oral transmission that, say, the canonical New Testament Gospels did (which circulated in oral form for probably 40-60 years before they were committed to writing), then there is every reason to believe that their factual accuracy (although not their historicity) is potentially questionable. Mormon, like the authors of the NT Gospels, was undoubtedly less concerned about exact factual accuracy than he was about communicating over arching moral truths. It’s impossible, of course, to identify which stories from the Book of Mormon may have been embellished through oral transmission and which were written down almost immediately.
Thanks for the summary, Costanza. I think the point I was trying to make was that historical narrative recognizes historical sources as constraints on the narrative. While those sources or traces may be incomplete — and while while the content or quality of this or that source is subject to debate — that still seems sufficient to make historical narrative qualitatively different from the narratives, texts, memes, or cultural practices that form the subject matter of folklore studies. Those folklore narratives are complete in themselves. They’re not constrained by anything except transmission and collection.
So the statement in the article that “all the stories are true — it depends on the truth you’re looking for” is potentially misleading if “truth” means something different when applied to a historical narrative than when it is applied to a folkloristic narrative.
Reading comment 6 reminds me of a friend who is struggling right now with his testimony of Joseph Smith, particularly in relation to his use of seer stones for translation and treasure seeking, etc. He just wants the facts, the truth, and not just from anyone, from the church. It’s an interesting concept that history isn’t a collection of facts, but is so much more nuanced (as I learned in #3). Perhaps when we seek a definitive authoritative explanation, we are trying to give away the burden of interpreting the history for ourselves, and finding our own truth, so to speak. It is so much easier to have answers handed down on a silver platter, but perhaps that’s not really why we’re here. We’ve got to go through all the clues, assign value, determine credibility of sources, and assess for ourselves the validity of other’s claims. That’s pretty complicated stuff, and the church doesn’t always teach the value of the search, nor the skills needed to do it.
Sister Jessawhy,
I am shocked. I thought you were one of the good ones. So you have “a friend” who is struggling, and you admit that you, too, are doubting something about the teachings of the church. You do not recognize the great tool they teach us for deciphering truth — tools that are not taught in their fullness anyway else on the earth.
It is quite simple, actually (if you are worthy). If you lack wisdom, ask God. He will communicate the truth to your heart through his still small voice. It may require prayerful scripture study (which is different than academic scripture study where people think that when they are learned they are wise — prayerful scripture study requires humility), it may require fasting, it may require hours of faithful fervent prayer and it will definitely require leading a worthy enough life to be able to hear the voice of the lord when he whispers (in my case, I have come to hear those whispers as shouts).
I am more fearful for your soul than I have been in many days, Sister Jessawhy. I will pray that both you and your “friend” will partake of the sweet fruit of repentance. You should take a bite of it right now (if you are still humble enough to find the tree).
Jessawhy, what you say makes perfect sense. I suspect a common reaction to getting “a little bit of knowledge” is a rejection of one’s received set of predigested authoritative explanations, coupled with a demand that a new and more convincing set of authoritative explanations be supplied. If that person does not persevere, they will end up (like many disaffected Mormons) permanently unhappy about this or that set of offered explanations, but unwilling to do the work to develop their own historical and moral views that would meet the sort of criticism they so readily dish out to any authoritative explanation (i.e., anyone else’s views). Sometimes one just has to puzzle one’s way forward to one’s own set of explanations. Treasure-seeking and polygamy fall into this category for most people, given how unconvincing most “authoritative explanations” are on these issues.