1st Edition
Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland
This collection explores folklore and folkloristics within the diverse and contested national discourses of Britain and Ireland, examining their role in shaping the islands’ constituent nations from the eighteenth century to our contemporary moment of uncertainty and change.
This book is concerned with understanding folklore, particularly through its intersections with the narratives of nation entwined within art, literature, disciplinary practice and lived experience. By following these ideas throughout history into the twenty-first century, the authors show how notions of the folk have inspired and informed varied points from the Brothers Grimm to Brexit. They also examine how folklore has been adapting to the real and imagined changes of recent political events, acquiring newfound global and local rhetorical power. This collection asks why, when and how folklore has been deployed, enacted and considered in the context of national ideologies and ideas of nationhood in Britain and Ireland.
Editors Cheeseman and Hart have crafted a thoughtful and timely collection, ideal for students and scholars of folklore, history, literature, anthropology, sociology and media studies.
1 Introduction
Matthew Cheeseman
2 Grimm ripples: the role of the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagen in the collection and creation of national folk narratives in Northern Europe
Terry Gunnell
3 Forest murmurs: wood and wild in the making of England
Jeremy Harte
4 ‘The Last Earl of Hallamshire’: legend, landscape and identity in South Yorkshire
David Clarke
5 Anarchy in the UK: Haddon and the anarchist agenda in the Anglo-Irish folklore movement
Ciarán Walsh
6 ‘Powerful and sovereign medicines … virulent poisons also’: Arthur Machen, occultism, and the Celtic Revival
Felix Taylor
7 Visions of English identity: the country dance and Shakespeare-land
Derek Schofield
8 Embodied Englishness in the inter-war morris revival
Matt Simons
9 A Scottish Volk? Folklore, anthropology, race and nationalism in inter-war Scotland
Katie Meheux
10 Photographic surveys of calendar customs: preserving identity in times of change
Andrew Robinson
11 Folklore as McGuffin: British folklore and Margaret Murray in a 1930 crime novel and beyond
Paul Cowdell
12 Et in arcadia ego: British folk horror film and television
Diane A Rodgers
13 Bloody Europe: Brexit and the making of a myth
Tabitha Peterken
14 Folkloric landscapes and the heroic outlaw in Britain and Ireland
Carina Hart
15 ‘Our community could start our own traditions’: the commingling of religion, politics, and the folkloresque in a far right groupuscule
Andrew Fergus Wilson
16 Blood, blots and belonging: English Heathens their (ab)uses of folklore
Kate Smith
17 The Tale of Hanan the Tailor: storytelling in times of change
Shonaleigh Cumbers and Simon Heywood
Biography
Matthew Cheeseman is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at University of Derby. He is a Council member of The Folklore Society and a trustee of Bloc Projects. He runs a small press, Spirit Duplicator.
Carina Hart is Assistant Professor in Applied English at the University of Nottingham. She specialises in global Gothic folkloric and fairy tale literature, and has also published on Romantic poetry and on fairy tale and alchemy in contemporary fiction.
"a welcome addition to the field, particularly for highlighting the creative ways in which folklore has been absorbed into popular culture and imagination." - Sue Allan, Folk music Journal
