Folklore

I have decided to take English 391 "Introduction to Folklore" while in the field. I will be working with Professor Jacqueline Thursby. She has mentored many students on this course while out in the field and she is very enthusiastic and excited about the subject of folklore. I adore passionate teachers!

After our first meeting she had me read an article on the basics of folklore. I absolutely ate this article up. It was so fascinating. It talked about the differences between myths, legends, marchen, folktales, memorate, urban legends and all sorts of other folk narratives.

Folklore can be a number of things it can be stories, handicrafts, dances, traditions, as long as they are something that shed greater light on the society it effects or harbors in. In folklore they refer to a story or artifact as an "item". So for ENGLISH 391 I will be collecting as many items as I feel are pertinent for my subject and then creating a finished paper synthesizing the similarities and such between them. Clifford Gertz is quoted in the article as saying that "analaysis is guessing at meanings." That is just what I will be doing with the items I collect in my interviews and conversations.

So to finish this post I will specifically point out what types of stories I will collect.

Genres of Oral Narrative

Myth- a sacred narrative that people tell about the beginnings of things. Often related to religion, ritual and ceremony.

Folktales- completely fictional tales where characters are not real people.

Legends- Stores people tell about events that purportedly really happened. Specifically supernatural legends that include stories of ghost, spirits, witches, dead, and other supernatural creatures and events.

Memorate- an expression of a personal experience with the supernatural

Urban legends- sotres of horror or erriness that involve weird events, close calls or horrible deaths. Local legends would deal with the local location.

Personal Narrative- a unique story about an event that has occurred in the narrator's life (Probably the majority of my items will be personal narrative).

The perception of American women outside of America

We had an interesting conversation in class about the topic of how women are perceived outside of America. I had thought of this before when I watched a Bollywood film called, "Marigold" about a high maintenance movie star who travels to India to be in a movie and finds that her every need is not catered to. This was a highly hyperbolic situation and her character was over the top but it did make me think about the way I could perceived when I travel to Ghana. Some of the stereotypes we identified in class were needy, high maintenance, sexually forward, aggressive, haughty etc. As I thought about some of these things I thought about how I value some of these perceived attributes only maybe in a different form. Aggressiveness could be determination and work ethic that I value, perceived haughtiness could be my attempt to try to do things myself and be independent and not needy.

I have often picture myself in the field strong and successful, not needy or unfriendly in anyway. I have believed I am capable of forming relationships and being respectful. But my idea of respectful would be looking someone in the eyes and my idea of success would be meeting a lot of Ghanaians whom I could interview by being outgoing. But the other night the Ghanaian I interviewed taught me that PDA was looked down upon and children don't look adults in the eye. These facts make me feel that maybe being aggressively outgoing or trying to do everything myself is not the way to build rapport with the Ghanaians around me. Maybe they are, but I think I need to be a little bit more open to different ways of defining respect and independence within the Ghanaian culture.