Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Impact of Ossian: Johann Gottfried Herder's Literary Legacy
- Chapter 2 On Robert Burns: Enlightenment, Mythology and the Folkloric
- Chapter 3 The Classical Form of the Nation: The Convergence of Greek and Folk Forms in Czech and Russian Literature in the 1810s
- Chapter 4 Literary Metamorphoses and the Reframing of Enchantment: The Scottish Song and Folktale Collections of R. H. Cromek, Allan Cunningham and Robert Chambers
- Chapter 5 Thomas Moore, Daniel Maclise and the New Mythology: The Origin of the Harp
- Chapter 6 The Oral Ballad and the Printed Poem in the Portuguese Romantic Movement: The Case of J. M. da Costa e Silva's Isabel ou a Heroina de Aragom
- Chapter 7 Class, Nation and the German Folk Revival: Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner and Georg Weerth
- Chapter 8 The Estonian National Epic, Kalevipoeg: Its Sources and Inception
- Chapter 9 The Latvian Era of Folk Awakening: From Johann Gottfried Herder's Volkslieder to the Voice of an Emergent Nation
- Chapter 10 From Folklore to Folk Law: William Morris and the Popular Sources of Legal Authority
- Chapter 11 Pioneers, Friends, Rivals: Social Networks and the English Folk-Song Revival, 1889–1904
- Chapter 12 The Bosnian Vila: Folklore and Orientalism in the Fiction of Robert Michel
- Epilogue: The Persistence of Revival
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Contributors
Chapter 4 - Literary Metamorphoses and the Reframing of Enchantment: The Scottish Song and Folktale Collections of R. H. Cromek, Allan Cunningham and Robert Chambers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2012
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Impact of Ossian: Johann Gottfried Herder's Literary Legacy
- Chapter 2 On Robert Burns: Enlightenment, Mythology and the Folkloric
- Chapter 3 The Classical Form of the Nation: The Convergence of Greek and Folk Forms in Czech and Russian Literature in the 1810s
- Chapter 4 Literary Metamorphoses and the Reframing of Enchantment: The Scottish Song and Folktale Collections of R. H. Cromek, Allan Cunningham and Robert Chambers
- Chapter 5 Thomas Moore, Daniel Maclise and the New Mythology: The Origin of the Harp
- Chapter 6 The Oral Ballad and the Printed Poem in the Portuguese Romantic Movement: The Case of J. M. da Costa e Silva's Isabel ou a Heroina de Aragom
- Chapter 7 Class, Nation and the German Folk Revival: Heinrich Heine, Georg Büchner and Georg Weerth
- Chapter 8 The Estonian National Epic, Kalevipoeg: Its Sources and Inception
- Chapter 9 The Latvian Era of Folk Awakening: From Johann Gottfried Herder's Volkslieder to the Voice of an Emergent Nation
- Chapter 10 From Folklore to Folk Law: William Morris and the Popular Sources of Legal Authority
- Chapter 11 Pioneers, Friends, Rivals: Social Networks and the English Folk-Song Revival, 1889–1904
- Chapter 12 The Bosnian Vila: Folklore and Orientalism in the Fiction of Robert Michel
- Epilogue: The Persistence of Revival
- Bibliography
- Index
- List of Contributors
Summary
In the late-Romantic period of the early nineteenth century, folk collectors were often careful to attest to the authenticity of their materials; but these claims are frequently undermined by clear evidence of editorial intervention which, from a modern-day perspective, makes such collections problematic. The Grimms' Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Tales for Children and Household) of 1812–15 is perhaps the most famous example of how reshaping and refashioning may be imposed for a diversity of reasons, which may be moral, intellectual or spiritual in nature and implication. The character of such refashioning – a kind of metamorphosis – can in itself be interesting and revealing. In collections of materials relating to supernatural subjects, the work of transformation is especially suggestive. The memorialising impulse speaks of the desire to preserve a particular worldview, one which is inevitably endangered but still perceives the possibilities of the magical in the mundane. Moreover, the survival of belief, although ‘transformed’ by the process of collecting and printing, also attests to the survival of a culture.
In Scotland, the recording of what might be termed an ‘enchanted past’ shared with other European collecting practice of the period the desire to preserve aspects of traditional culture which were of both national and regional significance.
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- Information
- The Voice of the PeopleWriting the European Folk Revival, 1760–1914, pp. 49 - 64Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2012