Folk tradition, literature, and a society in transition : Newfoundland

• Main Author: Byrne, Pat, 1943-
• Other Authors: Memorial University of Newfoundland. Dept. of Folklore
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 1994
• Subjects: Literature and folklore > Newfoundland and Labrador; Oral tradition > Newfoundland and Labrador; Folklore > Newfoundland and Labrador; Newfoundland and Labrador in literature; Canada; Newfoundland; Newfoundland studies; University of Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/theses3/id/47557

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1995. Folklore Bibliography: leaves 424-528 This thesis focuses on the ways in which the folk tradition was perceived and presented by selected twentieth-century Newfoundland authors during the period in which an indigenous literature was developing on the Island, and it argues that, because Newfoundland also witnessed sweeping political, economic and cultural changes during the decades between 1920 and 1970, various conceptions of the worldview, communicative structures, and other expressive forms of the folk tradition provided writers with a means of addressing the anxieties and uncertainties which accompanied the society's transition from a traditional to a modern one. In order to create a framework for the study, Chapter One provides a general overview of the scholarship on the interrelationships between the verbal and written arts in general, and between folklore and literature in particular, and argues that an understanding of this interrelationship is facilitated by the view which sees folklore as the result of repeated patterns and processes and not simply as items or texts. Chapter Two discusses the notion of the folk culture as an intellectual construction in historical and scholarly perspective as related to folkloristics generally, discusses the notion specifically in terms of the Newfoundland context, and advances the concept of a regional mythology as a notion less susceptible to high cultural bias because it evolves as a product of both the folk and literate traditions. Chapter Three presents an overview of the socio-political forces that moulded the evolving Newfoundland society which formed the background against which the indigenous literature developed, and provides a survey of the Island's literary history to 1920. Chapters Four and Five discuss the different responses to the folk tradition in the works of writers who published between 1920 and 1970, and Chapter Five suggests, as a basis for further study, that, once an indigenous literature was fully established, the uses made of the folk tradition by the literate culture were radically different from those which had marked the period during which an indigenous literature was developing.