| Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity |
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Locating Irish Folklore: Tradition, Modernity, Identity. by Diarmuid Ó Giolláin. Cork: Cork University Press, 2000. Pp. xx + 228. Index, select bibliography. £40.00 cloth, £14.95 paper. Diarmuid Ó Giolláin's thorough book explores the different strands informing Irish folklore scholarship by demonstrating the European and American intellectual influences on Irish folklorists. The book situates modern folklore studies within Ireland's historical, geographic and research traditions, while also touching upon the applications of folklore and folkloric discourse in Ireland today. The seven chapters build chronologically, moving from "The End of Tradition" through a discussion of the place of popular culture in Irish folklore studies. The chapters "Towards a Concept of Folklore" and "Folklore and Nation-Building" are especially useful to the reader wanting to understand the intellectual roots of European folklore scholarship, beginning with the seventeenth-century intellectual traditions and ending with their informing the establishment of such museums as the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and the Irish National Folk Museum (set to open sometime in 2001 near Castlebar, County Mayo). Although this book is brief at 228 pages, Ó Giolláin treats the major intellectual trends and ideas that led to the modern conception and subsequent academic study of folklore. Interestingly, Ó Giolláin includes brief notes on the rise of folklore in a number of other, mostly European, countries. In so doing, he reinforces the place of modern Irish folklore scholarship as part of a European tradition emanating from Ireland's long association with Nordic folklore studies, but he also emphasizes the role played by nationalism and nation-building. Readers learn a little about folklore's intellectual history and its institutionalization in Estonia, Finland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Brazil. He does not, however, ignore or exclude American folklore scholars; in particular, he notes the shift in folklore studies in the late 1960s, and he includes the effects of these intellectual movements on folklorists in Ireland. Ó Giolláin's emphasis on historical methods and in placing Ireland alongside the histories of other European countries allows him to focus on Irish "pioneers" and processes in the second half of the book. The chapter entitled "Irish Pioneers" includes all the usual suspects in Irish folklore studies--including a short description of Northern Irish scholars, who are often omitted from such histories--and leads into a discussion of the Gaelic League's role in situating Irish folklore as something distinct from Anglo traditions. One theme that runs through the book is that Irish folklore as we know it echoes Éamon de Valera's projected nation: Irish, Gaelic, and Catholic. He illuminates and ultimately deconstructs this notion by providing the historical circumstances in which Irish folklore studies were developed and maintained. He does not shrink from the criticisms of the idealization of poverty by (specifically Anglo-Irish) folklorists (indeed, he obliquely includes his own). But he nevertheless rebuts a scathing attack on Séamus Ó Duilearga made by Irish-language writer and intellectual, Máirtín Ó Cadhain. As the book's title suggests, the aim of Locating Irish Folklore is not to undermine folkloristics, but to provide a context in which it can be understood. In his final chapter, Ó Giolláin addresses how folklore scholarship sits with mass, popular, globalization, and youth cultures. This gives the book a current tenor that does not date it as specifically millennial, but which does allow for different definitions of folklore and a broadening of genres. Ó Giolláin's view of tradition as dynamic permeates the book, as does his emphasis on the relevance of folklore and folklore studies today. Christie Fox |
