Monogenesis Theories

UNIT 3 EUROPEAN SCHOOL OF FOLKLORE

Structure

3.0 Objectives
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Diffusion Theories: Classification
3.3 Brief Introduction to the Scope and Development of Folkloristics in
European Context
3.4 Comparative Folklore Theory in the European Context
3.5 National Folklore Theory in the European Context
3.6 Check your Progress
3.7 Let us Sum Up
3.8 Suggested Reading
3.9 Check your Progress: Possible Answers

3.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through the points covered in this unit and completing the exercises,
you will be able to:
 Provide a brief overview of the types of monogenesis diffusion theories;
 Understand the significance of the Finnish Historic-Geographic School in
the study of western folklore;
 List the limitations of the Finnish Historic-Geographic School; and
 Briefly recall the development of National Folklore Theories in Russia,
Germany and Hungary in the 20th century’.

3.1 INTRODUCTION
This unit will discuss some of the important monogenesis diffusion theories and
views regarding the study of western folklore prevalent in the European continent
in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, before that, let us recall what we have
learnt in the previous units. Answer the following questions briefly:

Check Your Progress 1:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 1: What do you understand about the concept of diffusion in
folkloristics?
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 European School of
Check Your Progress 2: Folklore

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;

2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 2: Recall the main postulates of Benfey’s theory of migration
briefly.
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3.2 DIFFUSION THEORIES: CLASSIFICATION

In the previous units, we understood that broadly speaking, when ‘mythological
theory’ was becoming well-established in Europe in the mid-19th century, Theodore
Benfey, a German Indologist who was translating the Panchatantra and who
was motivated by Max Müller’s ideas and their atomistic and diffusionist nature,
pointed out significant connections between the Sanskrit and European stories.
According to Benfey, the subject resemblance is generated not just by genetic
relationships between peoples, as Max Müller and his supporters purported, but
also by cultural and historical ties or borrowing that occurs between them. He
traces this borrowing to migration (hence the name ‘migration theory’) through
natural occurrences, battles, conquests, and so forth. Benfey posited that ancient
India was the fundamental wellspring from which European peoples drew material
for their poetic works. He not only identified theme similarities across tales (which
in current parlance may be referred to as motif similarities), but he also tracked
the geographical origination and, to some degree, the history of such narratives.
Such tales, according to him, went from India through the Mediterranean Sea,
the Far West, Spain, the Greek islands, and eventually Europe.
It should be remembered, however, that Benfey based his theory on the atomistic
logic, which is central to diachronic research, by which the entire oral tale genre
of Europe could be reduced to some basic atom from which the tales could have
diffused and travelled to peoples on different continents and countries that are
although genetically unrelated but have a shared history. According to Benfey,
India was the source of these atoms. While Benfey’s claim that India is the source
of almost all European tale genres could not be proven beyond a few shards of
evidence, his theoretical premise that oral tales or other forms of folklore can be
transmitted from one genetically unrelated culture to another has primarily
sustained the thrusts of later theoretical advancement in folkloristics.
However, rather than monogenesis, they are founded on the idea of polygenesis.
Benfey’s thesis, on the other hand, had a significant impact on folkloristic studies
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the first place, it gave
another theoretical and methodological cover to Max Müller’s historical
reconstruction approach, namely, diffusion in genetically unrelated populations.
It also prompted several Scandinavian researchers, notably those from Finland, 131
Monogenesis Theories to embark on the time-consuming work of researching the origins, histories, and
transit routes (in terms of geographical locations) of folktales. The most prominent,
and to some extent, the formalistic school in folklore studies, known as the
‘historical-geographical or more famously “Finnish school, was founded because
of this. This unit will discuss other monogenesis theories regarding western
folklore developed in the European continent in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Jack Zipes mentions two major classifications regarding the theories of the origins
of folktales in his book Why Fairy Tales Stick (2006). The first is monogenesis,
which holds that folktales are derived from a single source, such as myth. Grimms
brothers’ work and Theodor Benfey, who proposed that the genre’s origins may
be traced back to ancient India, correspond to this category. The second hypothesis
is polygenesis, which was created by French folklorist Bedier (1864-1938). Folk
stories, according to him, emerge independently in various locations and are
moulded, reformed, nurtured, and enhanced by storytellers. This theory is derived
from the assumption that humans all over the globe go through the same process;
therefore, it is only natural that they react to the environment and events in
comparable ways, utilising various versions of the same theme depending on
location, history, culture, and religion.
Fundamental to the monogenesis theories is the concept of diffusion. According
to Thomas A. Burns, diffusion theory suggests that expressive culture products
begin in one location and spread worldwide via transmission. In terms of cultural
interaction and following general concepts of social psychology and learning
theory, diffusion theory presupposes a notion of cultural transmission, however
simplistic. The diffusionist is concerned with tracking the spread of expressive
cultural products from their place of inception to their current dissemination
across time and space. Typically, efforts include working backwards from current
distributions to build the diffusion process and suggest the nature of the initial
invention. Burns sub-divides diffusion theories into the following types:
1. Single Point Diffusion Theories: According to single point diffusion
theories, cultural forms and products emerge at a single moment in time and
in a single location. When similar forms and products are discovered
elsewhere, they must be accounted for in terms of their dispersion from the
single point of origin. Under this further classification is as follows:
A. The Indianists: This group considers India to be the source of almost
all Western narrative literature, particularly in the realm of narrative
literature. The argument is since ancient Indian written records include
the earliest forms of many of the Western legendary tales. Indianists often
believe that the transmission of literature across long distances is
accomplished via written rather than oral methods. They tend to take an
aristocratic stance when it comes to the folk’s oral renditions of stories.
Indianists attempted to show that narrative literature found abroad could
be traced back to origins in India, assuming the dominance of writing in
literary transmission and of ancient Indian civilisation in the Western
world. The validity of the Indianist claim, however limited, is most likely
based on the Indo-European roots of Indian literature and culture.
B. The Egyptianists: While the Indianists focused on India as a source of
Western literature, Egyptianists offered Egypt as a source of sophisticated
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 cultural phenomena. Unlike the Indianists, they examined the entire European School of
Folklore
spectrum and not only the realm of literary production. Although the
Egyptianists incorporate myth, ritual, and the arts in their theory, this
culture is the only centre of their attention.
C. The Finnish Historic-Geographic School: This School of thought
concentrates on Western narrative literature but does not necessarily
attribute its origins to any one civilisation. On the other hand, the school
assumes that each conventional story has a single time and location of
birth and considers this original invention to be completely developed.
The historic-geographical researcher aims to re-create the original form
(the Ur-form) and history of specific traditional stories. The goal of these
scholars is to connect individual histories to identify the many cultural
origins that make up the Western corpus of traditional tales. Individual
histories are reconstructed using evidence from the following:
(1) recent distribution and frequency of report of oral versions of specific
narratives by folktale collectors
(2) written versions of and references to the narratives from various
times and places
(3) the history of cultural contact among various subgroups in the relevant
geographical area
This data is arranged according to a set of procedural norms, and it is
assessed and interpreted using a set of fundamental principles about the
nature of the story transmission process. However, the historic-geographic
school poses significant challenges in terms of:
(1) the sufficiency of current distributional and frequency data
(2) the necessity for contextual limitations on the application of
procedural and interpretative norms
(3) the validity of the notion of tale type
Because the historic-geographic concept of story transmission is based
on the premise, it is especially true. This assumption seems deceitful
considering the evidence of the fluidity with which themes migrate
between tale types in terms of motif clusters such as episodes and has
mobility. The corroboration of fluidity rather than the stability of elements
in the following:
1. in the extensive cross-referencing among types that is imperative
for scholars to index tales by types
2. in work on Amerindian tales by process-oriented anthropologists
who concluded that the narratives were unstable, and the motifs and
motif clusters were the stable components in the transmission
3. in the process-oriented work of East European Märchen and epic
traditions, which has corroborated the findings of Amerindian tale
researchers
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Monogenesis Theories While the traditional narrative, particularly the Märchen or fairy tale,
has been the emphasis of the Finnish School, historical-geographic studies
of certain songs, sports, plays, proverbs, and other traditions have also
been conducted.
2. Tempered Diffusion Theory: According to single point diffusion theory,
expressive cultural products emerge fully formed only once, and all future
evidence of the product is ultimately dependent on that original. According
to evolutionary theory, when the cultural circumstances (stage) are correct,
the same sophisticated, expressive behaviours emerge independently at
various periods and in different locations. Tempered diffusion theory provides
a reasonable middle ground between these two viewpoints. It implies that
simple ideas and expressive forms may arise (evolve) many times in various
locations independently, but complex ideas and particular complex products
are more likely to spread via diffusion. Tempered diffusionists deal with
cultural products that are sufficiently complex (house kinds, rituals, and
customs) to warrant the premise of dependence. The cautious attitude of
these researchers is reflected in the following:
(1) in their inclination to work in limited geographical areas
(2) in their inclination to the cultural context of the focal materials
(3) tendency to work with materials that have some reasonably permanent
artefactual manifestation or association to assist in judgements of
distribution and frequency of occurrence of the phenomena under
investigation
(4) in their proclivity to limit the time depth of their reconstructions to the
period for which their data is reasonably complete
It is within tempered Diffusion theory that expressive materials are studied across
cultures (intercultural) and within cultures (intra-cultural) at various levels (folk,
popular, elite) and sub-groups (minority, regional). Tempered Diffusion theory,
it should be noted, is a crucial theoretical perspective in folklife studies in this
manner.

Check Your Progress 3:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 3: What do you understand about the concept of tempered
Diffusion theory?
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Additionally, T. F. Crane reviews the various theories of the origin of the popular
134 tales and reduces them to three, calling them from the names of those who have
proposed them. Accordingly, they are Grimm’s, Benfey’s, and Lang’s European School of
Folklore
hypotheses. Grimm’s thesis (in which he includes the similar ideas of comparative
mythologists Max Miller, Sir George Cox, Hahn, and De Gubernatis) is that
popular stories are a component of the Aryan peoples’ mythology and were carried
with them when they dispersed throughout Europe. Benfey’s thesis, which, apart
from De Gubernatis, is the most prevalent among continental scholars, is that the
popular stories of Europe were brought from India throughout historical times
and disseminated primarily via literary routes, such as translations of Oriental
storybooks. Benfey does not delve into the origins of popular tales in the land to
which he traces them, instead limiting himself to the investigation of diffusion
channels and the proof of the substantial identity of Buddhistic stories from India
and household tales from Europe.
Andrew Lang proposed that ‘Household Tales’ fall in between savage tales and
early civilisation myths, and they were derived and passed down from man’s
savage condition, his primordial circumstances of life, and his primordial way of
perceiving the universe. The Grimm School argues that popular stories were
disseminated in the same way that Aryan languages were disseminated through
the dispersion of the original Aryan people. In terms of the transmission of tales,
they vary that it is impossible to ascertain how far they may have been passed
down from person to person and wafted from place to place in the distant and
immeasurable past of human antiquity, or how far they may have spread due to
the universal identity of human fancy. In comparison, Lang purports that the
mechanism of Diffusion is still a mystery. Much of it may be traced back to the
universal identity of the early fancy; some of it can be traced back to the
transmission. However, Benfey attributes the spread of popular tales to both
conscious and unconscious transmission through literary channels and word of
mouth.

Check Your Progress 4:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 4: Discuss Andrew Lang’s Theory.
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3.3 BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE SCOPE AND

DEVELOPMENT OF FOLKLORISTICS IN
THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT
W. J. Thoms invented the English word ‘folklore’ in 1846 to replace the expression
‘popular antiquities’. It refers to oral traditions of all types, including tales, legends,
ballads, and proverbs and superstitions, plant and animal lore, folk dances and
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Monogenesis Theories plays, conventions, and ritual. Social and political institutions, the cycle of life,
vocations, industries, and sports are all addressed in The Handbook of Folklore,
published in 1913. However, these are excluded by A. H. Krappe in The Science
of Folklore. In Germany, a similar form of research known as Volkskunde deals
in-depth with material culture. In Scandinavia, much of the earlier research
covered a similarly extensive field. While folk traditions (the general Scandinavian
term, of which the Swedish form is folkminne literally means folk memory and
the study is called folkminnesforskining) is now distinguished from folklife
(Swedish folkliv) in terms of material culture and social organisation, they overlap
in the realm of custom and belief.

Check Your Progress 5:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 5: How did Thoms describe folklore?
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In different nations and at different eras, the relationship between the study of
European and primitive folklore has also changed. Even though references to
various Italian, French, German, and Scandinavian collections could have
augmented the European, the primitive material predominates in the bibliography
of The Handbook of folklore. Tylor and Frazer’s concern about similarities between
primitive and European folk beliefs undoubtedly influenced this focus in England.
On the other hand, several German writers are persuaded that ‘historic’ and
‘unhistorical’ peoples are vastly different and must be examined in distinct ways.
Scandinavian folklorists do not seem to have adopted any a priori attitude on the
subject. However, the creation of the ‘historical-geographical’ technique of folktale
study in Finland and the accumulation of the main collections of material have
been the result of work done almost entirely in European cultures, generally by
members of the national groups concerned.
According to Stith Thompson, significant progress in folktale study over the last
40 years has been primarily due to close collaboration between folklorists from
Germany, Scandinavia, and Finland. However, because national pride has
frequently motivated European folklorists and aided in attracting the public and
private funding that their work has benefited from, the status of folklore studies
cannot be understood without reference to the history of nations. For instance, in
Ireland, songs, tales, proverbs, riddles, and other items were taken down as part
of the Gaelic language revival headed by Douglas Hyde towards the end of the
19th century. After years of political turmoil, the Folklore of Ireland Society was
formed in 1926. In its journal Béaloideas, the material is published as recorded,
verbatim, in Irish or English. The Irish Government created the Irish Folklore
Institute in 1930, and a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation enabled the creation
136 of a remarkable manuscript collection of folktales, folk songs, and other material.
The Irish Government replaced the Institute with the Irish Folklore Commission European School of
Folklore
in 1935, primarily due to suggestions made to President de Valera by C. W. on
Sydow of the University of Lund. Consequently, a substantial amount of material
in bound manuscript notebooks and dictaphone records has been accumulated.
Further, a study of Irish house types, field cultures, and agricultural tools was
conducted by A. Campbell of the University of Uppsala and A. Nilsson of the
University of Lund. The Commission’s archivist obtained his training at
Uppasala’s Dialect Archive, and there has always been a tight relationship between
Irish folklore study and Swedish techniques. Since it is impossible to sketch
such a background for every European country, in the subsequent sections, the
development of folklore research in Germany, Russia and Hungary is reviewed
in the 20th century.

Check Your Progress 6:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 6: Describe the efforts of the Irish Government to preserve folklore
studies.
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3.4 COMPARATIVE FOLKLORE THEORY IN THE

EUROPEAN CONTEXT
The primary line of European folklore research runs from the Germans of the
19th century to the Scandinavians today. In 1812, the Grimm Brothers began
collecting and publishing folktales; their annotators, Bolte and Polivka, in 1913,
began publishing their folktales thorough references to comparable versions of
Grimm tales recorded in the previous century. Then Finn Antti Aarne compiled
an index identifying main European tale-types, initially published in 1910 and
extended by Thompson in 1928 and 1961. On these foundations, in 1926, Aarne’s
countryman, Kaarle Krohn, built his renowned exposition on the principles of
folklore research, Die Folkloristische Arbeitsmethoden. The comparative folklorist
attempts to recreate the history of a complicated folktale, or perhaps a folksong
or other folklore item, by utilising this so-called ‘Finnish historical-geographical
Method’. Through a careful and unprejudiced analysis of each tale, the approach
was meant to resist hasty conclusions about the origin and meaning of folktales.
According to its principles, a tale with hundreds of oral variations must have
started with an intentional act of fabrication in one time and place. From its place
of origin, this story must have moved in ever-widening arcs. The tale’s ‘wave-
like’ dissemination will be influenced by convenient commerce and transit routes
and the secondary effect of the manuscript and printed texts, but dispersion will
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Monogenesis Theories occur throughout a growing geographical region. As a result, the Finnish approach
excludes broad theories of origin like polygenesis, or the independent invention
of complex stories, dream origins, ritual origins, origins based on heavenly
occurrences, savage mentality, or the manifestation of repressed infantile desires.
Anti-diffusionist views that claim tales cannot traverse language or cultural borders
are also dismissed by the Finnish School. The data from their monographic
research shows that specific stories and songs can easily cross linguistic barriers,
even more easily than they can cross cultural boundaries. The data also suggests
that the stories progress from more advanced to less civilised peoples. European
conquerors carried folktales to the continents of North and South America and
Africa throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, although African and American
Indian tales are not found among European peasants. As a result, the places of
origin of the widely disseminated folktales that have been extensively examined
are India and Western Europe, with Asia as a third option.
The Finnish School is still the dominating force in folklore science today, but its
assumptions and techniques are increasingly being questioned, and its defenders
have conceded some ground. Albert Wesselski (1871-1939), a brilliant scholar
of the previous generation, said that written versions of a tale profoundly impacted
its dissemination that all attempts to track oral spread were invalidated. Von
Sydow (1878-1952), a renowned Swedish folklorist, thought that local historical
and cultural circumstances shaped an international tale into sub-types, or regional
oikotypes, as he called them, with their own histories. He believed that a theorised
Urform that could never be proven was a fairy tale in and of itself.

Check Your Progress 7:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 7: What does the scholar Von Sydow opine?
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Other academics at the forefront of Scandinavian folklore activity today, such as

Christiansen of Norway and Bødker of Denmark, criticise the Finnish monograph
for its rigidity and mechanical character. According to these critics, the Finnish
approach reduces tales’ studies to statistical abstractions, summaries, symbols,
tables, and maps, disregarding artistic and stylistic elements as well as the
narrator’s human aspect. Furthermore, the Finnish method’s onerous requirements
appear to be out of proportion to the outcomes, as the process of collecting all
known variations almost defies completion.
For instance, Warren E. Roberts (1958) collected almost 900 type 480 writings
138 from all around the world using the Finnish technique in his monograph The Tale
of the Kind and Unkind Girls. Another reviewer, Thelma James, points out the European School of
Folklore
omission of 189 Latvian examples. At the same time, Walter Anderson, the dean
of comparative folklore scholars, notes gaps for Portugal, Spain (including
Catalonia), Spanish America, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Greece,
Hungary, Tartary, the Caucasus, Persia, and Japan. Roberts’ research acknowledges
previous criticisms of the historical-geographical method and pays close attention
to literary appearances and regional subtypes. It redefines the term “archetype”
to mean the most influential form affecting the variations found today in each
location rather than the one original form of the narrative. Roberts places the
origins of the narrative in the Near East in the 14th century, with a passage between
the Black and Caspian Seas, but he does not attempt to speculate on how the tale
made its way to India and Japan.
Before the 16th century, a new form of the narrative emerged from the Near East,
omitting the scene in which the heroine meets three talking animals, plants, or
objects. Many Märchen local forms are isolated, such as in Turkey, where the
story begins with the heroine chasing a rolling cake rather than falling into a well
or being taken downstream by a river. This is a representative study of a European
Märchen using the Finnish approach to methodology, findings, and theoretical
foundation. This research shows how a complicated folktale evolves while
maintaining its identity as it moves from its place of origin via traceable pathways
across the Indo-European landmass.
Critics of the Finnish approach object to the method’s restricted applicability
and its lack of conclusions. Most monographs that follow its methods deal with
the intricate European folktale. The primary, single-motif tale, on the other hand,
defies such scrutiny. Butler Waugh, on the other hand, has conducted similar
research (1959). The historical-geographical approach has been used in certain
ballad studies, although the selection of ballads is limited to those with a tight
narrative framework and stanzas of gradual recurrence. Ballads with these fixed
formulae and several European Märchen’s tri-episodic plots lend themselves well
to statistical computations of trait changes. Anderson’s Kaiser und Abt (1923),
the most famous monograph of the Finnish school, pursues a story built on riddling
questions; the questions may vary, but the structural core of difficult questions
and clever solutions stays consistent. In his study of The Ballad of HeerHalewjin,
Holger Ol of Nygard successfully makes these arguments (1958). The main
structural distinctions between folktale and ballad texts, according to Nygard,
render most ballad texts outside the scope of the Finnish approach.
The traditional ballad, unlike the narrative, does not usually rely on formulae,
and the ballad, more than the tale, owes an enormous debt to the stabilising
effect of literary texts. However, Nygard continues, “This technique of dealing
with the several versions of “Heer Halewijn,” Child ballad #4, takes historical
chronology and regional dispersion into consideration.” The most significant
change he makes to the Finnish technique is that he conducts his research in
different national-linguistic areas: Teutonic, Scandinavian, French, and English.
Furthermore, this revision harkens back to Von Sydow’s oikotypes.
The famous American folklorist Archer Taylor, who has examined individual
stories, ballads, proverbs, and riddles with equal authority, has presented another
and considerably more broad understanding of the Finnish approach. Before the
Finns, famous folklore researchers such as Child and Grundtvig, Gaston Paris, 139
Monogenesis Theories and Friedrich Ranke used the historical-geographical method, which Taylor
describes as “essentially a question of common sense.” They compared accessible
variations in head notes to texts or lengthier research, and on occasion, attempted
to identify the earliest characteristics. The Finnish folklorists formalised and
systematised methods that every serious scholar would at the very least initiate:
collecting all available data and arranging it into meaningful pieces. The idea of
the variation is one development in folklore research whose significance the
Finnish school has highlighted. Older folklorists used whatever text was closest
at hand to illustrate their points, not comprehending that every text is a variant
always caught at some moment in time and place and subject to change. Even the
first folklorists, like William John Thoms, who coined the term “folklore,”
annotated bits of tradition brought into the Notes and Queries columns.
The common-sense ideas of the Finnish approach, according to Taylor, may be
applied to any type of folk tradition. “Although reconstructions appear hazardous
in the extreme,” he writes in his own examination of the proverb, “we have seen
that the systematically chronological and geographical arrangement of the texts
has provided us new information. “The verb “glitters” was present in the most
current and recent examples of the proverb as Taylor discovered them. However,
“glisters” arose as well. Taylor established that “glisters” was the original form,
predating “glitters,” which supplanted it in the late 18th century, possibly when
actor David Garrick pronounced the word. As it turns out, Shakespeare used
“glisters” appropriately in The Merchant of Venice. Taylor writes, “It would be
difficult to find a more convincing instance of the historical-geographic technique
than this”.
When checked against early usage, the original assumption that the form
predominantly reported today is the oldest or most common form fails. Because
the folklorist must rely on collections produced within the last 150 years for his
field materials, he will constantly run into problems while researching a tradition’s
history before the 19th century. The historical-geographical method acknowledges
the problem and corrects the imbalance by assigning greater weight to early
documented versions, early features that have survived in oral tradition, and
significant changes that have recast the tradition. The Finnish comparative
folklorist has shifted focus away from philosophical and metaphysical concerns
of meaning and toward empirical questions of actuality. Even if his search for
Urformen was thwarted, he was successful in developing the Normalformen.
Nobody can claim that this type of folklorist is unscholarly. The Finnish
monograph may be regarded as a long, thorough, and laborious annotation.
However, it overlooks some of the most pressing issues for academics. The
percentage tables and narrative summaries are unjustified when it comes to style
and artistry, secret processes of creation and change, national cultural influences,
the social environment, and individual brilliance. Other folklorists’ speculations
on such issues have been left unanswered.

3.5 NATIONAL FOLKLORE THEORIES IN THE

EUROPEAN CONTEXT
Folklore studies have a paradox in that they go back and forth between opposing
poles of attention. Folklore materials are equally suited to comparative,
140
transnational, or cross-cultural theorising as they are to internal, national self- European School of
Folklore
appraisal. The comparative method emphasises the commonalities and themes
of folklore across numerous countries, whereas the nationalistic approach focuses
on the unique characteristics of folk customs within a single country. Where a
national folklorist finds the unmistakable imprint of his people’s humour or pathos
in a proverb of a common coin, the comparative folklorist dryly points out that
the identical saying may be found in many other languages. A neutral observer
would note that a Märchen goes throughout the world with its tale core intact,
but it’s presenting style, tone, and descriptive detail change considerably. As a
result, comparative and nationally oriented folklore specialists’ views can
complement rather than contradict one another.
Folklore concerns and the emergence of a patriotic spirit frequently coincide.
Small nations, such as Finland and Ireland, express their cultural independence
by resurrecting their native tongues and diligently collecting the folk epics and
sagas, poems, and stories that their people have transmitted in those tongues.
The fieldwork of Elias Lönnrot, who gathered folk charms and runes and
incorporated them into the Kalevala in 1835, is where the study of folklore in
Finland starts. Since then, the Kalevala has been a popular topic of study for
Finnish folklorists and a literary treasure for the Finnish people.
Some powerful nations have used folklore as a potent and diabolic weapon of
propaganda. For instance, folklorists were used by Nazi Germany to bolster the
idea of a master race linked by mystical blood and culture, including folk culture.
The National Socialist administration of Adolf Hitler was the first nation-state to
make folklore studies a political priority. An extensive folklore literature was
written in Germany throughout the 1930s, illustrating the Nazi notion of a
Herrenvolk linked by mystical connections of blood and tongue, culture, and
tradition. Since Herder’s time, the name Volk had a mystical connotation, and it
now had a political one; the Volk was the country. Because of Hitler’s dogma of
racial unity, the Nazis dismissed Hans Naumann’s concept (whose Griundzuge
der deutschenVolkskunde, 1922, would be criticised by the Soviets on entirely
different grounds), which attributed folklore’s origins to an Oberschicht, an
intelligentsia, from which folklore trickled down to a Unterschicht, the peasantry.
Naumann released a revised edition in 1929. In their search for a spiritual ancestor,
Nazi folklorists avoided well-known names in German scholarship such as
Grimm, Mannhardt, Kohler, and Bolte, who were less interested in theory, and
instead focused on Riehl, a sociologist and travel writer who published Die
VolkskundealsWissenschaft in 1858. The Nazis admired Riehl’s suggestion that
folklore and the social sciences, in general, should focus on German topics and
put that knowledge to practical use. As a result, a working understanding of
common conventions and usages might be beneficial to police science. Folklore
became a popular subject at certain universities in the late 1920s, sometimes as a
required course or as an add-on to a broader course in German Kulturkunde or
Landeskunde. Adolf Bach’s 1937 dissertation Deutsche Volkskunde concluded
with the notion of a “Fuhrerschicht,” in which Hitler, infused with the spirit of
Volk, becomes the judge of German folk culture. The “folkish” state was the
focal point of Hitler’s political philosophy.
Soviet Russia established a party line for folklore, conveniently locating the
communist spirit of social and revolutionary struggle in workers’ songs and stories. 141
Monogenesis Theories Soviet Russia saw folklore as a potent tool for advancing communism. Folklore
studies made significant progress in Tsarist Russia throughout the 19th century,
thanks to academics like A. F. Hilferding (1831-72), who concentrated on the
biography and personality of the individual interviewee.

Check Your Progress 8:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 8: How did folklore develop in Russia?
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................

Throughout and after the October Revolution, scholarly interest in the collecting
and study of folk materials grew. However, the Communist Party was shocked to
discover that its folklore scientists were advocating an anti-Marxist theory in
1946.
Folklore, according to a commonly held concept among continental folklorists,
descends from the intellectuals to the peasants, where it is found as a sort of
“gesunkenes Kulturgut,” as stated most explicitly by the German Hans Naumann.
A party order quickly overturned this theory of beginnings, and the principle
established that folklore began as a creative expression of the working class. It
seems to be a foregone conclusion that Soviet policymakers should have prioritised
folklore. Substitute “people” for “folk,” a simple substitution since the Russian
term narodny is used for both. In epic tales and ballads of the brave outlaw who
outwits the wealthy landowner, prejudiced priest, Tsarist soldier, and grasping
mill owner, emphasise the themes of class struggle. Thus, the argument for the
folklore of the people is made.
When the Party finally realised the reality 19 years after the October Revolution,
the directors of Soviet thinking moved swiftly to restructure the topic following
Communist ideology. Leaders of the “historical school,” whose views had
dominated Russian folklore research, openly admitted that conservative Western
academics had contaminated their work. Propp rejected formalism, Andreyev
the Finnish approach, Zhurminsky and Sokolov disregarded Hans Naumann’s
vulgar sociology. Academicians Y. M. Sokolov and Veselovsky Miller today
acknowledge their inability to identify the actual social and class character of
oral poetry and legend, as well as their disregard of the creative element in
working-class poetic works. The Marxist ideas guiding the research are strikingly
apparent in Sokolov’s new “folkloristics”: (1) Folklore is a relic of the past, but
it is also a resounding voice from the present. (2) Folklore has been and continues
to be a mirror of class struggle as well as a weapon. To put it another way, folklore
was to join literature, music, and the arts as a regulated manifestation of proletariat
ideas. However, the distinctive feature of folklore that made it so valuable to
142 Soviet ideology was in the hands of agricultural and industrial workers, not a
tiny intellectual elite reflecting the people’s ideals. The notion that the employees European School of
Folklore
not only recited but produced the legend was required for propaganda reasons.
The appearance of boyars, Cossacks, and other nobles in Byliny, according to
revisionists, was due to poetic idealisation. The Party line cleverly emphasised
the creative function of the folk narrator and folksinger, a focus on which 19th
century Russian folklore research had taken the lead. In his work published in
1950, Sokolov collects quotes from Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin to show
their affinities for folk products in his fresh look at Russian folklore.
Slavophiles, romantics, and advocates for “official nationalism” are all labels
applied to earlier folklore schools. Folklore is seen as a battleground between
conservative and socialist interpretations and between classes, with the workers’
traditions being prioritised. In the past, the kulaks, or small bourgeoisie, or criminal
elements, stole the folklore of the people, a process that explains the emergence
of comparable traditions across various socioeconomic groups. As a result, the
Byliny, legends, skazki, chastushki, and laments must not be allowed to float
among the populace but must be gathered and created under appropriate
supervision, then filtered out and disseminated to the workers via all available
media-radio, cinema, theatre, phonograph, and print. Encourage collective-farm
stations to write Revolutionary War-themed songs and tales and recognise
exceptional folk artists.

Check Your Progress 9:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 9: How does folklore become a political battleground?
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................

Oral literature aided both the socialist and nationalist causes by bringing the
various peoples of the Soviet Union closer together via a shared workers’ legend.
The writer A. M. Gorky, whose own works had leaned heavily on folklore, stated
at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 that oral poetry relied
on strenuous activity for its strong generalising imagery. Hercules, Prometheus,
Mikula Selyaninovich, and Svyatogor are examples of heroic workers. Gorky
then paid homage to an illiterate folk poet from Daghestan, Suleyman Stalsky,
whom he dubbed the “Homer of the 20th century” during the conference.
The advent of institutionalised Soviet folklore was characterised by these official
ceremonies. Folklorists were given a new task: to look for pre-revolutionary
evidence of proletarian sentiments in folklore. Folklorists from the 19th century
who grasped the principles of social development were finally recognised. I. G.
Pryzhov observed that folklore mirrored people’s real-life struggles against tsars,
clergy, and landowners, while I. A. Khudyakov explored social protest and class
satire in popular stories and historical folk songs. Pre-proletarian folklore was 143
Monogenesis Theories discovered in manorial and possessional industries, among forced labour groups,
bondservants, urban handicraftsman, and home artisans, after extensive study.
Interviews with elderly men and searching through old collections uncovered a
factory and mill protest legend. Miners’ songs and tales of resistance against
harsh supervisors and mine owners were triumphantly portrayed in V. P.
Biryukov’s Pre-revolutionary Folklore of the Urals, published in 1937. Soviet
folklorists argued in these studies that peasants and workers were intimately
related, that the early factory was really a manufactory and that agricultural skills
were just being transferred to the city. “The Secret Tale of the Golden
Commander,” a tale passed down among the working class and unbeknownst to
their superiors, was Biryukov’s prized discovery. Andrey Stepanovich Plotnikov,
a rural serf who became a foundry worker and later a bandit commander in the
Urals, was known as the “Golden Commander.” In 1771, he assassinated Shirayev,
a harsh millowner. When his robbers kidnapped Shirayev’s niece, Plotnikov killed
his own commander, who was attempting to rape her. In exchange, she granted
the Golden Commander a magical spell that allowed him to access the mountains’
riches. After his arrest and death, the Golden Commander was immortalised in
tales based on the Returning Hero, who returns at a time of need to save his
people. All the ingredients for the pre-revolutionary hero may be found here.
Plotnikov is a villager who became a worker; he exudes the spirit of revolution
and has a clean heart. In the tale treasured by oppressed workers, historical truth
is mixed with traditional elements. Unearthing pre-revolutionary folklore is much
more difficult than collecting current Soviet folklore of the appropriate ideological
colour. A new type of popular culture has emerged under the Soviet regime: the
“martial revolutionary song.” Revolutionary heroes are modified from older forms.
Budyonny and his renowned red cavalry are honoured in a cycle of poems, while
Chapayev, the civil war hero, is honoured in a cycle of stories. Traditional fairy
tale motifs and structure are used by a skilled bard writing heroic stories about
Chapayev, such as the victory by the knight of serpents and demons (according
to the analysis of folklorist A. N. Nechayev).

Check Your Progress 10:

Notes: 1) Your answer should be 50 words long;
2) You may check your answers with the answers given at the end
of this unit;
Question 10: Give one example of pre-revolutionary folklore.
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................

The link between folk culture and the subject of social protest should not be
dismissed as mere propaganda. Even though labour folklore has gotten little
attention in the United States, George Korson’s pioneering collections of miners’
songs and tales show deep anger of hard-working conditions and greedy bosses.
Deep tensions are shown by the harsh jests of Negroes and immigrants. Jesse
144 James and Sam Bass, for example, are well-known outlaws. However, in folk
writing, the note of protest is only one among several. Soviet folklorists’ efforts European School of
Folklore
to imbue the folk bard with originality and connect him to the literary author,
who likewise revises his writings and uses traditional forms, misrepresent the
situation. The folk bard does not write or compose in the same way that a writer
or poet does. The folk singer and storyteller choose from a small and inherited
corpus of oral tradition. They do not experiment with new forms or topics. In the
story of Chapayev, the poet wrote his eulogy soon after hearing a Bylina and
simply replaced conventional actors and adventures with Chapayev and his Red
Army victories. Soviet folklore’s theoretical claims are unsustainable, but their
propaganda effectiveness is apparent.
We see the similar application of Marxist principles to folklore in Hungary, which
is portrayed in very patriotic terms. According to Linda Degh, a prominent modern
Hungarian folklorist, the study of folklore in Hungary has always had a unique
character in terms of its goals, techniques, and interests, which set it apart from
similar initiatives in other countries. Hungarians felt that deep immersion in all
aspects of indigenous culture was necessary to preserve national identity. The
19th century discovery of folklore offered up a new avenue for study into Hungarian
customs. “Every genuine Hungarian poet utilised folk-poetry as a source of
inspiration” from the mid-century on, According to Degh. Folk literature collectors
and revolutionaries teamed together to fight for the same cause.
The ethnic folklore collections aided in the preservation of Hungarian unity in
the face of Austrian authority and the recalling of a glorious past and a distinct
racial origin. The “theatrical and artificial fashion of interest in the people”
predominated throughout the majority of the 19th century. A genuine desire to
build Hungarian national culture on the culture of the people did not prevail until
after World War I. The current “scientific” approach toward folklore arose from
this drive. The Folklore Fellows of the Ethnographical Society published a series
of pamphlets in 1920 to raise knowledge of the techniques and ideals of folklore
research. In one of these booklets, Zsigmond Szendrey stated, “It is our political
responsibility to gather the material for a Hungarian folklore museum.”
However, Degh points out that the upper class exploited this “fake interest” in
folklore, resulting in such affectations as trends in national clothing and food
while ignoring the terrible living circumstances of the peasants. The empirical
techniques and theological foundations of folklore research gained solid root
with the appearance in the 1930s and 1940s of renowned scholar Gyula Ortutay
and his pupils, including Linda Degh herself. New research on individual folk-
personality and functional mechanisms for transmitting folk items emerge during
this period. Hungarian socialism benefits from an ethnographic study of folklore.
In 1949, on the hundredth anniversary of the Hungarian War for Liberation, a
collecting inquiry was organised to collect the peasantry’s traditions of the event,
which resulted in the collection of 50,000 artefacts. Degh argues that the
transmission of folk stories among the working classes and traders and the
“agricultural proletariat” is highlighted in monographic works.
Gyula Ortutay, writing on the more recent era of Hungarian folklore studies, has
declared clearly that they are communist. He identifies the issues of the working
class as the primary studies to be followed by the new Hungarian folklore study
in an expanded description of “The Science of Folklore in Hungary Between the
Two World Wars and During the Period Subsequent to the Liberation” (1955). 145
Monogenesis Theories This new path has been inspired by Marxist-Leninist philosophy. The Party’s
guidance was instrumental in the organisation of a joint conference between
folklorists and members of the Institute of the Hungarian Working-Class
Movement in 1953.
Hence, we see that the orientation of national theories or approaches to folklore
can be determined by differences in cultural history and academic settings in a
specific country. In Japan, Sweden, Peru, and the United States, a phrase as
nebulous as “folklore” will have vastly different connotations. Indian music, dance,
clothing, and tales remain alive and well in Latin American countries, but the
Indian has been excluded from US society for historical reasons, and its traditions
are followed by anthropologists rather than indigenous peoples in North America.
Sweden emphasises rural folk museums, Japan associate’s folklore with popular
Shintoism, while England clings to the memories of her intrepid Victorian
folklorists and their survival theory. However, while the emphasis may differ,
the relationship between patriotic feelings and interest in popular folkways is
similar throughout countries. Another divide may be seen within established
nations, between those who use folklore for political gain and those who encourage
objective research to add to the known pool of national traditions. Governments
in certain countries, such as England and the United States, are indifferent to or
even hostile to folklore study.

3.7 LET US SUMUP

In this unit, we have provided a brief overview of the types of monogenesis
diffusion theories. The key ideas to remember are:
While Thomas A. Burns classifies the Single Point Diffusion Theories into three
subtypes as The Indianists, The Egyptianists and the Finnish Historic-Geographic
School and the Tempered-Diffusion Theory, T. F. Crane gives an alternative
classification based on the significant proponents of such theories from Europe.
He reduces them to the theories of Grimm, Benfey and Lang. Under the
comparative paradigm, The Finnish Historic-Geographic school is still the
dominant force in the study of western folklore today, but its assumptions and
methods are increasingly being called into question, and its defenders have given
up some ground. In this unit, we have also briefly addressed some of the
shortcomings and pitfalls of this method. Finally, looking specifically at Germany,
Russia, and Hungary, (that are a part of continental Europe) it has been illustrated
how differences in cultural history and academic contexts of a country might
variously influence the direction of advancement of theories and approaches to
folklore.

3.8 REFERENCES AND FURTHER READINGS

Burns, Thomas A. “Folkloristics: A conception of theory.” Western Folklore 36.2
(1977): 109-134.
Growth of Folklore Theories: An Introduction chapter 2 (ciil-ebooks.net)
Newell, William Wells. “Theories of diffusion of folktales.” The Journal of
American Folklore 8.28 (1895): 7-18.
146
Lindgren, Ethel J. “The collection and analysis of folklore.” The Study ofSociety: European School of
Folklore
Methods and Problems, ed. FC Bartlett, et. al. London: Keegan, Paul, Trench,
Turbner and Co. Ltd (1939): 328-378.
Crane, Thomas Frederick. “The diffusion of popular tales.” The Journal of
American Folklore 1.1 (1888): 8-15.
Dorson, Richard M. “Current folklore theories.” Current anthropology 4.1 (1963):
93-112.
Growth of Folklore Theories: An Introduction Chapter 2 (ciil-ebooks.net)
Lindgren, Ethel J. “The collection and analysis of folklore.” The Study of Society:
Methods and Problems, ed. FC Bartlett, et. al. London: Keegan, Paul, Trench,
Tubner and Co. Ltd (1939): 328-378.r

3.9 CHECK YOUR PROGRESS: POSSIBLE

QUESTIONS
1. Diffusion implies the act of ‘spreading out’ or moving from one place to
another. Scholars have tried to explain the presence of similar stories across
cultures that are geographically and historically not connected, either by a
monogenesis theory which states that all similar tales share a common source
in the distant past or through the polygenesis theory of having multiple origin
points. However, no single theory can explain the origin and occurrence of
the different genres of folklore across continents that can match the
correspondence of themes, patterns or motifs.
2. Theodor Benfey (1809-1881) supported a similar belief and brought out a
translation of the oldest surviving collection of Indian fables, Panchatantra
by Vishnu Sharma written around 200 B.C., accompanied with notes and
comparisons in 1859. Benfey noted that these fables were modifications of
Æsop’s fables and had reached India from Greece and from India it had
travelled to the rest of the world. According to him, in the 10th century or
later, these tales travelled from India to Europe, through the Mongols and
the Arabs of Spain and through the trade routes. As earlier, Buddhism had
been a factor for communication between China and Tibet, Islam had been a
factor in the spread of these tales from India to the other parts of the world.
3. Tempered Diffusion Theory: According to single point diffusion theory,
expressive cultural products emerge fully formed only once, and all future
evidence of the product is ultimately dependent on that original. According
to evolutionary theory, when the cultural circumstances (stage) are correct,
the same sophisticated, expressive behaviours emerge independently at
various periods and in different locations.
4. Andrew Lang proposed that ‘Household Tales’ fall in between savage tales
and early civilisation myths, and they were derived and passed down from
man’s savage condition, his primordial circumstances of life, and his
primordial way of perceiving the universe. The Grimm School argues that
popular stories were disseminated in the same way that Aryan languages
were disseminated through the dispersion of the original Aryan people. In
terms of the transmission of tales, they vary that it is impossible to ascertain 147
Monogenesis Theories how far they may have been passed down from person to person and wafted
from place to place in the distant and immeasurable past of human antiquity,
or how far they may have spread due to the universal identity of human
fancy. In comparison, Lang purports that the mechanism of diffusion is still
a mystery. Much of it may be traced back to the universal identity of the early
fancy; some of it can be traced back to the transmission.
5. W. J. Thoms invented the English word ‘folklore’ in 1846 to replace the
expression popular antiquities. It refers to oral traditions of all types, including
tales, legends, ballads, and proverbs and superstitions, plant and animal lore,
folk dances and plays, conventions, and ritual. Social and political institutions,
the cycle of life, vocations, industries, and sports are all addressed in The
Handbook of Folklore, published in 1913.
6. The Irish Government replaced the Institute with the Irish Folklore
Commission in 1935, primarily due to suggestions made to President de
Valera by C. W. Von Sydow of the University of Lund. Consequently, a
substantial amount of material in bound manuscript notebooks and
Dictaphone records has been accumulated. Further, a study of Irish house
types, field cultures, and agricultural tools was conducted by A. Campbell of
the University of Uppsala and A. Nilsson of the University of Lund. The
Commission’s archivist obtained his training at Uppasala’s Dialect Archive,
and there has always been a tight relationship between Irish folklore study and
Swedish techniques. Since it is impossible to sketch such a background for
every European country, in the subsequent sections, the development of folklore
research in Germany, Russia and Hungary is reviewed in the 20th century.
7. Von Sydow (1878-1952), a renowned Swedish folklorist, thought that local
historical and cultural circumstances shaped an international tale into sub-
types, or regional oikotypes, as he called them, with their own histories. He
believed that a theorised Urform that could never be proven was a fairy tale
in and of itself.
8. Soviet Russia established a party line for folklore, conveniently locating the
communist spirit of social and revolutionary struggle in workers’ songs and
stories. Soviet Russia saw folklore as a potent tool for advancing communism.
Folklore studies made significant progress in Tsarist Russia throughout the
19th century, thanks to academics like A. F. Hilferding (1831-72), who
concentrated on the biography and personality of the individual interviewee.
9. Folklore is used as a means for political identity of a nation and hence it is
used to prove the originality of a nation. Hence it can prove to be a battle
ground.
10. Folklorists were given a new task: to look for pre-revolutionary evidence of
proletarian sentiments in folklore. Folklorists from the 19th century who
grasped the principles of social development were finally recognised. I. G.
Pryzhov observed that folklore mirrored people’s real-life struggles against
tsars, clergy, and landowners, while I. A. Khudyakov explored social protest
and class satire in popular stories and historical folk songs. Pre-proletarian
folklore was discovered in manorial and possessional industries, among forced
labour groups, bondservants, urban handicraftsman, and home artisans, after
extensive study.
148