The Folkloresque: Reframing Folklore in a Popular Culture World

Michael Dylan Foster · Jeffrey A. Tolbert

noy 2015 · University Press of Colorado

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This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the “folkloresque.” With “folkloresque,” Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline.

Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling and comedy, and even popular science writing all commonly incorporate elements from tradition or draw on basic folklore genres to inform their structure. Through three primary modes—integration, portrayal, and parody—the collection offers a set of heuristic tools for analysis of how folklore is increasingly used in these commercial and mass-market contexts.

The Folkloresque challenges disciplinary and genre boundaries; suggests productive new approaches for interpreting folklore, popular culture, literature, film, and contemporary media; and encourages a rethinking of traditional works and older interpretive paradigms.

Contributors: Trevor J. Blank, Chad Buterbaugh, Bill Ellis, Timothy H. Evans, Michael Dylan Foster, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Greg Kelley, Paul Manning, Daniel Peretti, Gregory Schrempp, Jeffrey A. Tolbert

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Michael Dylan Foster is associate professor of folklore and East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University. He is the author of Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai, The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore, and numerous articles on folklore, literature, and media.

Jeffrey A. Tolbert is assistant professor of American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. His research focuses on supernatural belief, and his dissertation examines belief and the landscape in contemporary Ireland. His broader research interests include folklore and popular culture, especially video games, and supernatural traditions in new/digital media, such as the Slender Man Internet phenomenon.