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The Performance and Perception of Folklore and Literature

Citing these famous words of Cassius from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Max Lüthi calls attention to one of many characteristic examples of the use of a theme in a classic work of literature that is encountered time and again in populär narrative. With aesthetic sensitivity and critical acumen unrivalled among his fellow folktale scfaolars, Lüthi has penetrated into the vital essence of populär narrative prose where he has discovered priceless gems of many such themes and he has shown how they are expressed in simple and graceful eloquence even when narrated by unknown individuals. How refreshing it is to have these profound insights at a time when literary studies and folkloristics are inclined to proceed along their own separate paths blissfully unaware of eadi other! Especially remarkable is Lüthi's rare ability to perceive these profundities with clarity and to express their meaning so convincingly that his readers are seduced into thinking that he is merely stating the obvious. In truth, his perceptive insights — like the egg of Columbus — are only obvious after he has expressed them in his deceptively simple, clear and eloquent style. At a time when other sdiolars have been concentrating on differences which separate literature from folklore, Lüthi has successfully redirected our attention to those elements which both forms of human expression share, and for this he has earned our indebtedness. This sharing of a common ground has been especially lost sight of by my compatriot folklorists in the U.S. where the so-called "performance-oriented school" of folkloristic research has been holding center-stage for the past decade. The members of this "school" have, for the most part, seen the performance of oral narrative äs occurring in a context of human interaction and thus äs representing a dynamic process which they conceive to be quite distinct from what occurs when narratives are fixed in printed form in books and magazines. Robert Georges, for example, goes so far äs to reject the study of folktale texts äs literature altogether; "[. . .] the study of story texts amounts to nothing more than the study of written representations of one aspect of the messages of complex communicative events referred to throughout this paper äs 'storytelling events'. If investigators expect to understand these events, they must conceive of them holistically rather than