University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Department of Near Eastern Languages and Departmental Papers (NELC) Civilizations (NELC) 2014 A Definition of olklorF e: A Personal Narrative Dan Ben-Amos University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers Part of the Folklore Commons, Near and Middle Eastern Studies Commons, and the Oral History Commons Recommended Citation Ben-Amos, D. (2014). A Definition of olklorF e: A Personal Narrative. Estudis de Literatura Oral Popular (Studies in Oral Folk Literature), 3 9-28. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/141 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/nelc_papers/141 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. A Definition of olklorF e: A Personal Narrative Abstract My definition of folklore as "artistic communication in small groups" was forged in the context of folklore studies of the 1960s, in the discontent with the definitions that were current at the time, and under the influence of anthropology, linguistics - particularly 'the ethnography of speaking' - and Russian formalism. My field esearr ch among the Edo people of Nigeria had a formative impact upon my conception of folklore, when I observed their storytellers, singers, dancers and diviners in performance. The response to the definition was initially negative, or at best ambivalent, but as time passed, it took a more positive turn. Keywords context, communication, definition, performance,