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Abrahams, Roger D.  1976.  “The Complex Relations of Simple Forms.”  In Folklore Genres, Dan Ben-Amos, ed.  Austin: U. of Texas Press, pp. 193-214.  [Originally printed in Genre 2, 2 (June 1969): 104-28.]
   

“The Complex Relations of Simple Forms”
Roger D. Abrahams

[beginning of page 193] 

Without accepting Northrop Frye’s definition of genre, one can agree with his dictum on the use of generic criticism: “The purpose of criticism by genres is not so much to classify as to clarify ... traditions and affinities, thereby bringing out a large number of literary relationships that would not be noticed as long as there were no context established for them.” (1)  Frye points to the operational basis of this critical approach when he notes that “generic criticism ... is rhetorical, in the sense that the genre is determined by the conditions established between the poet and his public.” (2)  But genres are useful not only because they help us focus on the relationship between the performer and audience but because genres give names to traditional attitudes and traditional strategies which may be utilized by the performer in his attempt to communicate with and affect the audience.

Generic criticism is concerned with making a taxonomy of expressive habits and effects; it takes into consideration the content and structure of performances, in addition to the relationship of both creator and audience to the stylized item being performed.  We point to the genres because by naming certain patterns of expression we are able to talk about the traditional forms and the conventional contents of artistic representation, as well as the patterns of expectation which both the artist and audience carry into the aesthetic transaction.  Because of this emphasis on the traditional (or expected) elements in works of art, generic criticism is one area in which the preoccupations of the literary and the folkloristic theorists converge.

But this emphasis on conventions and cues that allow the observer to recognize the forms being used is the very characteristic of genre criticism to which the literary critic often reacts negatively.  To stress the conventions of a genre in belles lettres is to denigrate, to some de- [beginning of page 194] gree, the originality of the very art object which the critic is in the process of analyzing in terms of its uniqueness.  Consequently, there has been little informed commentary concerning the generative literary understandings the author brings to the creative experience and the means by which he elicits the same series of expectations on the part of his reading audience.

The folklorist has no such problems, for he recognizes that he is dealing with conventional objects of art.  He knows that if an item of oral literature does not provide very evident cues to this conventionality the traditional performer will be misunderstood by his audience.  Just as the narrator or singer must enact an item that conforms to an immediately recognized and accepted type, he must also do so in a manner such that every part of the performance is consonant with the range of expectations of that genre.  But he has available to him a range of what some might term cliches, which announce at the beginning and at crucial intervals what type of performance he is presenting.  The perceptions of genre are of greatest importance in understanding the ceremonial communicative interactions of small groups.

An investigator of expressive culture finds use for generic criticism in two ways.  The first of these, and most commonly used by ethnographers (especially in recent work), is to investigate what generic typological distinctions are made by the participants in a specific culture. (3)  Such analysis provides insights into the ways in which members of that group organize themselves for social and rhetorical purposes and how the social and aesthetic organizations reinforce each other.  Such an approach focuses on generic classifications as used by the group as one aspect of their culture.

This approach is of limited use to the comparative folklorist, however, for he is primarily concerned with analysis of items of traditional expression which appear in the repertoire of different groups.  for generic criticism to be useful to him it is necessary to survey expressive types found in a great many groups and in which the same items tend to recur.  Unfortunately, this approach has tended to be ethnocentric because the investigator often derives the generic typology from the categories of his own language and tradition.  Yet, both ethnographers and comparative folklorists must recognize that what is most important for analysis is not the typological system developed but the methodological system by which the genres are discerned and discussed.  Though genre criticism is useful in pointing to the conven- [beginning of page 195] tional elements of form, content, and use, whether found in one community or in many cultures, this is not the major importance of this critical approach.  rather, genre analysis provides a common frame of reference by which such conventions of form and use may be compared and thus permits one genre or group of genres to cast light on others, either within one group or cross-culturally.

If terms for folklore types are to be useful it seems necessary to describe each genre as a member of a class of related items and yet distinct from the members of the class in specific and discernible ways.  In other words, one should not only be able to point to a class of expressions like proverbs and riddles but to demonstrate how they differ from each other -- how games differ from rituals, and myth from Marchen.  We can establish a meaningful basis of comparison between the genres by making each genre the member of a class of objects.
 

I

Folklore is a collective term for those traditional items of knowledge that arise in recurring performances.  The concept of folklore is unthinkable without those compositions, for they are the channels of wisdom and entertainment, but for the folklore to exist it must be enacted.  For folklore to work effectively in a performance there must therefore be a consonance between the situation that has arisen, the item that is called forth, and the enactment.  The performer must recognize the situation when it arises, know the appropriate traditions, and be able to perform effectively.  Just as in any personal interaction, the enactment must evince understanding of the decorum involved in the social system in which the performer and performance exist.

Such concerns of appropriateness may be regarded as both constraining and liberating.  The performer must pick an item that is not only on the appropriate theme and calls for the proper level of diction and has a message which is pertinent, but the item must have internal characteristics that make an appropriate comment on the situation, and it must do so judiciously and economically.

Folklore performance so described may appear to impose upon the speaker delicate and difficult demands, but in practice this is [beginning of page 196] not the case.  The group’s conventions associate certain sets of problems with sets of expressive forms -- a genre or genres.  In fact, the situation often calls for a definite performance, since such enactments will encapsulate a problem and propose a solution.  This almost reflexive response is apparent in the operations of devices like proverbs and superstitions.  These short traditional statements are directed at obvious problems which have arisen in the course of conversation.  But the culturally conditioned suggestion of appropriateness of occasion is equally true of larger forms like seasonal rituals and festivals.  These focus on troubling transitional times of the year, which call for a traditional setting-aside of occasions for ceremonial performances.

We name most traditional genres through a combination of patterns of form, content, and context.  Though the patterns of content and form are discernible within the items and genres themselves, the patterns of usage are externally imposed.  Custom in a community may establish a traditional relationship between a specific item and a particular situation, or between a genre and a range of situations.  But the same item or genre may be used in entirely different contexts in another group, or the same situations may be answered by totally different items.  However, certain elements of structure or content make the genres especially useful in particular kinds of recurrent situations.  This results in repeated and similar usage of the same types in different cultures.  Even so, the folklorist can never take this cross-cultural use of specific genres for granted.

The appropriateness of any given genre to a particular situation is determined by a number of elements.  Of these, thematic content is the most obvious.  The subject of a proverb, superstition, or exemplary story must be pertinent to the problem at hand.  Certain content differences are somewhat more subtle, and consequently their particular use are more difficult to discern.  For instance, proverbs and taunts are both overtly ethical in theme, and they may attack recurrent problems of interpersonal behavior with similar economical means of persuasion.  However, they differ considerably in the diction they utilize.  Taunts, direct in their approach, commonly use the pronouns you and I and other words of direct personal reference.  Proverbs, on the other hand, are more constrained, using an impersonal approach and an emotionally-muted diction.  The openly aggressive content of the taunt makes it inappropriate (“untactful,” we say) for most problems in this range.

[beginning of page 197] If elements of content are the most evident means for assaying appropriateness, structural characteristics such as size or length of the performance item may be equally essential in determining choice.  For instance, proverbs and moral tales (such as fables) both attack recurrent interpersonal problems concerned with the common opposition between individual needs and social necessities.  Because of the length of the fable, its use is dictated by the amount of time the listeners are willing to give to the performer.  Since most such ethical problems are brought to notice through conversations between equals, in many cultures there would be a hesitation to introduce a fable because the decorum of conversation does not often permit allocation of that period of attention to one speaker.  Therefore, the brevity of proverbs would increase their utility.  In such discourse systems, fables may then be reserved primarily for the sue of older people talking to younger, because the older person is permitted both the time and the opportunity.  Group practice accords the aged more latitude for developing ethical points, and the age-rank hierarchy calls for the use of this kind of educational device.

Another important contextual consideration may be in the effect of the relationships between the component parts of the composition.  In this regard, the differences between the riddle and the proverb are instructive. (4)  Both are economical descriptions with two or more elements.  In proverbs, the elements cohere, creating a clear picture amenable to a specific reading.  With riddles, the descriptive elements seem to conflict and therefore to produce confusion, at least until the answer is given.  The proverb, therefore, is available in situations calling for clarification, whereas riddles are more useful in contest situations (like riddle sessions), which call for licensed interpersonal aggression.  But we do not make the distinction between proverbs and riddles solely on the basis of the different ways in which their elements come together; important differences of content and usage also determine the establishment of genre.
 

II

It is possible to distinguish three important structural levels in folklore forms; the structure of the materials, dramatic structure, and [beginning of page 198] structure of content.  The first involves the interrelationship among the building materials of folklore items -- words, actions, tones (wood and stones).  At that level we focus both on the physical quality of the material and on the organized relationship among the particular components of each item.  Such patterns of repetitions suggest both the expectation and the recognition of different genres.  These distinctions are based on stylizations of certain materials.  For instance, peoples of many cultures distinguish between verse (i.e., language ordered through imposition of meter, line length, and a sense of balance in the line or between the lines) and prose (relatively spontaneous and casual use of language).  Similarly, we distinguish genres that stylize word-sounds (literature), tones (music), movements (dance), colors and two-dimensional shapes (painting), three-dimensional shapes (sculpture), and so on.

A second and equally important level of structure for discernment of genres is dramatic structure.  This level is important only in those genres in which there is a dramatic involvement -- that is, where there is a conflict between characters depicted and a resolution provided for this conflict.  There are literary types, for instance, which are differentiated according to the way in which the drama develops -- such as comedy (development toward marriage or unity of the sexes), tragedy (development toward representative death leading to  rebirth of the group), and romance (serial conflicts of a hero that lead to his gaining a source of power).  Similarly, we distinguish between hero tales, which establish patterns for emulation, and cautionary tales, which portray actions to be avoided.  Though content may establish the requisite tone for distinctions of this sort, commonly a dramatic development (victory of perseverance of hero, defeat of villain, exposure of fool) establishes the point of view and persuasive purpose of the piece.

The third level of structure, and the one of greatest concern in this essay, is the structure of context.  This is the level of structure where the patterns of relationships between the participants in the aesthetic transaction are considered.  That is, on this level the focus is on the way in which actors and audience interrelate and on how situation or occasion affects this relationship.

Many generic distinctions are primarily based on factors on this level of situational patterns.  Some genres, for instance, are named because of the occasion on which they arise -- Christmas carols, party[beginning of page 199] games, and so on.  Place determines others -- stage plays, bedtime or fireside or household stories.  But the central focus of the structure of context is on performer-audience relations.  It is here, for instance, that we make distinctions among the major folkloristic genres of myth, legend, and folktale, for the difference pointed to in these fictive forms is in the area of belief.  This has to do with the way in which the audience apprehends the tone of the performer and interprets his meaning; such interpretation is important because it determines how members of the group will interpret the actions and distinguish between those motives to be emulated or avoided and those which simply explain, or explain away, or allow for fantasizing.

One of the major conceptual errors committed by folklorists in the past has occurred because, in regard to myths, legends, and folktales, they have not distinguished between structure of context and dramatic structure.  To be sure, it is generally agreed that the major differences between these genres lie in the area of belief, but, when compendia of dramatic motives were made, these situationally based distinctions were retained.  Consequently, there are indexes of types and motifs of folktales, and other legends, though the dramatic movements are the same or similar, and indeed, the same stories often recur in different situational structures of belief.
 

III

The structure of context can provide a frame of reference for the comparative examination of traditional genres.  There is a significant difference in form and technique between a proverb and a Marchen.  Their greatest difference (beyond the obvious size of the forms) resides in the distinctive relationship between the proverb sayer or storyteller and their respective audiences.  The proverb generally arises in casual conversation to make a point about the specific situation being discussed.

The proverb sayer appeals, directly or by analogy, to an approved course of action which has been effective in the past.  He does so in order to solve an immediate problem and to influence future attitudes or actions.  The tale teller, on the other hand, calls into play verbal and instructive techniques and a dimension of aesthetic pleasure ab- [beginning of page 200] sent from the conversational situation of the proverb.  His performance tends toward the highly stylized words and actions requiring a distinct time and place, in which he can make an imaginary world with the approval (indeed, encouragement) of his audience.  To be sure, he too is trying to persuade his audience, but his strategy aims at a less strategic effect.  In short then, the narrative involves a psychic separation of performer and audience not observable in proverb use.

The performance techniques of the proverb and the folktale do not exhaust the possible relationships of speaker and listener.  In fact, the range of performer-audience relationships, graphically rendered in Figure 1, runs from the personal interactions of conversation to the total distance or “removal” of performer from audience, as in the presentation of objects of art like a folk painting.  Between the poles of interpersonal involvement and total removal are four discernible segments of a spectrum into which folklore genres tend to group themselves in terms of describable traits of performance.  These are conversational genres, play genres, fictive genres, and static genres.  The progress from the more interpersonal to the more removed involves a passage from the smaller and more intimate forms invoked as part of direct and spontaneous discourse to the larger and more symbolic genres, which rely upon a profound sense of psychic distance between performer and audience.  The shorter forms employ fairly direct strategies that rely on the intensity and color and concision of manipulated materials to do their convincing.  Though all folklore calls for a sympathetic relation between formal object (the item of folklore) and audience, the longer genres increasingly draw upon vicarious, rather than immediate, involvement to induce the sympathetic response.
 

Conversational Genres

In the conversational genres, one person directs his expression in an interpersonal fashion to a limited number of others as part of everyday discourse.  The speaker does not need to assume any involved character role to make his point.  He, rather, is engaged in a spontaneous communicative relationship in which opportunities to introduce traditional devices of persuasion commonly arise.  Nearly everyone in a group avails himself of these forms, and fairly often.  All the cliches [beginning of page 201] and commonplace expressions of personal interaction are included in this group.

Two groups of genres are conversational.  The first includes the smallest elements of patterned expression common to the group, for example, local naming procedures for people, places, herbs and flowers, birds, and so forth; jargon, slang, colloquialisms, and special languages; intensifying and hyperbolizing description.  All of these are used in a conversational context to flavor and intensify speech.  Jargon, colloquialisms, slang, special languages (like Pig Latin), and local naming are primarily special in-group vocabularies which serve to define the membership of a group.  The intensifiers function adjectivally and are often called “proverbial” because they involve conventional units of composition larger than the single word.  However, unlike proverbs, they lack an independent line of reasoning and merely contribute to the strategy of a larger argument.  This group includes traditional similes (“as green as grass” and “as slow as molasses in January running uphill sideways”) as well as comparisons (“like a bat out of hell” and “in like Flynn”).  These exemplify the most common forms of intensification in English; others, more complex in construction (“she’s so ugly she’d stop a watch” or “he’s so dumb he wouldn’t know how to pour piss out of his boot if it had instructions printed on the heel”), are symbolic extensions of these forms.

The second conversational group includes formal conventions of the discourse of address, appeal, and assault.  It includes proverbs, superstitions, mnemonics, spells, curses, prayers, taunts, and charms.  In the case of proverbs, superstitions, and mnemonics different kinds of knowledge are communicated.  Proverbs contain social wisdom and comment upon man’s relation to other men, whereas superstitions (and mnemonics) focus on man’s relation to the forces of nature (“red sky in the morning, sailors take warning”) or to the supernatural (“If you hear a dog bark at night close by, a friend is going to die”).  Such expressions help to control the shock value of these forces external to ourselves by formulating a traditional prediction, explanation, or counteraction.  On the other hand, curses, spells, and taunts attempt to influence social, natural, and supernatural phenomena through the bare power of the embodied and spoken word. (5)

With such forms as charms and taunts we depart a little from everyday consideration into a special kind of discourse, which is neverthe- [beginning of page 202] less based on the model of the conversational back-and-forth and uses the same kind of persuasive devices.  Though one does not generally assume any kind of special mask or role in making such an utterance, the occasion for its use is more specialized and therefore is approaching the genres in the play segment of the spectrum.  This is even more apparent in the use of a common type of patterned conversation one might term “conversational repartee” of the “See you later, alligator! -- After ‘while, crocodile!” sort.  This is clearly one of the conversational genres because of its performance occasion, but its pre-patterned verbal exchange is closer to that of folk drama.  Still closer to such “play” forms are longer repartee routines such as: “That’s tough.  What’s tough?  Life.  What’s life?  A magazine.  Where do you get it?  Down at the corner.  How much?  A dime.  Only got a nickel.  That’s tough.  What’s tough?...”
 

Play Genres

There are few differences between such traditional repartee and the simplest of the play genres such as riddles or tag games, for they too develop upon the back and forth movement of interpersonal communication.  Yet riddling arises most commonly in a riddling session, a special occasion for performance somewhat removed from casual conversation and in which an implicit set of rules and boundaries operates.  Furthermore, the riddling occasion calls for a donning of certain masks (riddler and riddlee), which are discrete (that is, can be distinguished from each other because of the contest situation and the relative place in the contest taken by a player at a specific time).  Those involved in traditional repartee also may be viewed as wearing a temporary mask, but the masks of the two or more speakers can not be readily distinguished from one another.  Furthermore, the role played in riddling and other play forms differs more profoundly from those assumed in everyday life than in traditional repartee.  The roles played in play genres are as traditional as the pieces performed and therefore as stylized.  To make these roles significant and symbolic, and to mark the difference between play and other activities, a stylized play world is created, which is very like the real world but psychologically (and often physically) removed from it in time and space.

The difference between conversational and play genres is perhaps [beginning of page 203] best describable in terms of the distinction made by sociologists between particularistic and universalistic roles.  When one talks conversationally, one assumes a particularistic role, a role determined by one’s social position in relation to those who are listening.  Thus it is a status role that is assumed by the speaker and acknowledged by his auditors.  This is simply saying that the interactants know each other in terms of a continuing social relationship and that their conversational devices will be in part determined by this positioning.  On the other hand, as soon as one assumes a role that is named and therefore can be filled by any number of others, one is playing a more universalistic role.  This is the difference between someone who is “my father” and someone who is referred to as “the father,” even if they happen to be the same person.  A greater number of rules and conventions of stylized activity operate in the latter situation.

Play, by definition, arises in an atmosphere that produces the illusion of free and undirected expression while remaining under control.  By effecting a removal from the real world into the stylized one, a tension is established through the involvement power of sympathetic identification with the enactment at the same time as a psychic distance is established through the creation of the stylized world and the mannered presentation.  This allows for the cathartic response to the activity -- the simultaneous identification and distancing.  We can identify with even the most anxious situations when they arise in the controlled environment of the play world.

In other words, in this play world the spirit of license reigns, allowing for a “playing out” of motives we don’t allow ourselves under the circumstances of real life.  Any place may become the arena for playing, and any time the occasion, but in the more elaborate play genres the times and places are often as traditional as the pieces performed in them.  Game playing may arise any place, for instance, but the more complex play activities need a field or stage or consecrated place with evident boundaries to supplement the rules and conventions of playing.

As with the conversational genres, the play sector divides itself into the more interactive and the more elaborately removed genres, but here three subsegments may be discerned.  The first subgroup has a lesser degree of psychic removal and role playing than the others, and therefore the genres found in it tend to occur more frequently and [beginning of page 204] spontaneously.  Types in this subcategory tend to be more formal in presentation than the other play genres and thus demand more advance preparation.  Included in the first subsegment are riddles and joke sessions and other traditional verbal contests, nonprogrammatic folk dances, and most games.  In the second are spectator sports and traditional debates and contests like spelling bees.  In the third are rituals, folk plays, and those games and dances that have a set progression of movement (such as a story) and traditional role playing.

The first subgroup, as noted, shares certain attributes of the conversational genres: emphasis on the back-and-forth movement of conversation, a near-identification of role and performer, and a not very involved set of those rules, boundaries, and conventions that control the course of play.  Yet the total pattern of play is predetermined in a riddle session or in a game of tag, though not the direction that the play will take.  It is this quality of dramatic confrontation without a predetermined resolution that characterizes all of the genres in the first two groups of play forms.

In the more interactive games of Play I, the players are each other’s audience, and then activity provides little interest for spectators.  Each person is potentially a participant in this play.  On the other hand, in the second group of play genres, there is a distinction between players and audience, a distancing movement, which is carried even further in the third group, where the sense of removal is complete.  In Play II, interaction is still viewed as interpersonal, but in Play III the personal element is sacrificed to the ensemble effect of the role playing, and the audience therefore focuses primarily on the symbolic motives being enacted.  Whereas in the more interactive play forms there is a sense of removal that, like conversation, is spontaneous and temporary, such a feeling of spontaneity is less in Play II genres with the addition of spectators, and in Play III the degree of formality and conventionality is high.  In these last two genres, there is a greater feeling of artificial dramatic involvement, emphasizing that the resolution of conflict is predetermined.

The distinction between games like tag in Play I and spectator sports in Play II goes further than just this growing sense of removal through the introduction of an audience.  In the Play I genres there are commonly two discrete roles -- like “Hare and Hounds,” “Cops and Robbers” (i.e., pursuers and pursued), or riddler and [beginning of page 205] riddlee.  When spectators take a place in the structure of context, the spectators need a representative to guarantee the maintenance of the rules and the boundaries.  Thus in Play II a further discrete role is that of one person on stage or on field who begins and ends the proceedings and who serves to uphold the rules (timekeeper, umpire, scorekeeper, judge).  As the sense of removal felt by the audience increases, a greater number of these on-the-spot representatives are called for.

In Play III genres, at least one further discrete role is introduced.  It is convenient to view the change as bifurcation of the representative figure and his role in Play II into one figure who introduces and ends the proceedings by direct address to the audience and another figure-type who serves to further or continue the action (blocking character, resuscitator, mediator).  Play II forms are thus denominated by commonly having four or more discrete roles.

In the more active genres of Play III, such as folk drama, contact between performers and audience is almost completely severed -- this is what is meant by the term “psychic distance.”  Identification with the conflict occurs vicariously, rather than through participation, as in a game.  In a game like “Hide and Seek” the actors would direct their performances to each other, but in the folk play they coordinate their actions for an ensemble effect, which is directed to the spectators viewing from their removed positions.  Though the actor may identify with his role and derive ego gain from its performance, he must primarily channel his energies into the total effect of the piece in order for the play to work.  The vicarious sympathetic involvement of the audience is an integral part of the technique of all genres on the side of the spectrum consisting of Play III, fictive, and static genres (see Figure 1) and dictates the organizations and affects the strategies of all items in these genres.
 

Fictive Genres

The segment of the fictive genres includes those which most folklorists would call the major types (and which many would say are the only folklore genres).  Here there is a further removal of speaker from spoken-to; all movements and motives are depicted fictively, that is, through suggestive description in words and gestures.  As in [beginning of page 206] the play genres, there is symbolic role playing in a time and place removed from real life, but all dramatic movement must be envisioned by the mind’s eye.  One performer generally serves as the voice for all the characters, though in certain cases a group performs antiphonally or in concert.

Like other segments, this one tends to divide into the more interpersonal and the more removed.  On the more interactive side are those forms in which the audience (or part of it) are drawn into the performance.  This group would include all items in the chanter-response, antiphonal pattern and those which have a chorus of added voices.  Most work songs and drinking songs qualify for this group.  It would also encompass cante-fables in which the repeated song is sung by the audience, traditional sermons that call for interspersed responses, and catch tales.  The genres in the more removed subsegment are those which have a totally monologue performance.  This would include most of the narrative forms: epic, ballad, folktale, myth, legend, anecdote, and most jokes.  (Jokes that tell a story are a problem -- in a joke-session they are functional equivalents of riddles, insofar as they emphasize the triumph of wit.)  This subsegment would also include a number of lyric forms such as laments, love lyrics, and celebratory pieces such as carols when individually performed.
 

Static Genres

The final group, which I have called static genres, is concerned with those types in which the performer expresses himself in a concrete form that remains after the moment of enactment.  Having performed, the artist steps back and lets his creation “speak for itself.”  He makes something which becomes independent of himself.  Like the fictive genres, the static pieces rely heavily on the imagination for an understanding of the meanings of their stories.  These genres include paintings, carvings, and designs which narrate a story.  Other folk-art forms portray an important character from the narratives of the group but do so without reference to a specific story or even scene; such creations are simple celebrations of the abilities or characteristics of the one depicted and in a sense take for granted a knowledge of how these came to be.  Folk art of this sort is therefore close to the
 

Figure 1 -- Range of level of interaction between performer and audience.  (far left) Total interpersonal involvement. Primarily active involvement. Involvement primarily through vicarious identification. Total removal. (far right) (far left)  Conversational genres I. Conversational genres II. Play genres I. Play genres II. Play genres III. Fictive genres I. Fictive genres II. Static genres. (far right) *** Conversational genres I -- jargon, slang, colloquialism, special languages, intensifiers, naming. Conversational genres II -- proverbs, superstitions, charms, curses, spells, mnemonics, prayers, taunts, traditional repartee. Play genres I -- riddling, joking, verbal contest, nonprogrammatic games and dances. Play genres II -- spectator sports, traditional debates and contests. Play genres III -- festival activities, ritual (including various religious practices), folk drama. Fictive genres I -- cante fables, catch tales, chanter-response songs. Fictive genres II -- epic, ballad, lyric, panegyric and hym, legend, anecdote, jokes, and other narrative forms. Static genres -- folk painting, folk sculpture, folk design.

 

Figure 2 -- Range of level of conflict. (far left) Total concern with conflict, movement. Conversational genres. Play genres. Fictive genres. Static genres. Total concern with resolution, feeling of repose, stability. (far right)

[beginning of page 207] celebratory fictive genres but differs from the fictive genres in the performer-audience relationship: the performer is completely removed from the performance after the object is made -- he has something which becomes independent of himself.
 

IV

Elaboration of the genre continuum has permitted an overview of traditional expressions in terms of the range of performer-audience relationships.  This spectrum can also shed light on other aspects of traditional aesthetic technique; in this regard, one can see a changing dramatic focus as one traverses the continuum.

By focusing on the relation between performers and audience, the emphasis has been upon genres as sets of performance pieces that performers employ to affect, to move the audience.  This affecting is brought about through sympathetic involvement of the members of the audience with the construction of the piece.  Each item is performed in an attempt to influence future action by appealing to past usage, but this does not mean that all items are uniform in their focus on the past.  Some performers choose items that apply to the present situation in terms of immediate consequences and thus would emphasize the immediate future.  Other performers take a longer view, searching the repertoire for illustrative anecdotes that would cast light on the present and, by influencing attitude, also affect actions.  Thus, conversational forms emphasize the potentials of the present situation, but as forms grow longer the strategy of persuasion calls more and more for reenactments or descriptions of action already completed.

In all genres there is a strategic articulation of conflict, intended to move the audience sympathetically with the movement of the item.  But not all genres emphasize conflict and resolution equally.  In fact, as one moves along the continuum from the pole of interpersonal involvement to that of complete removal, the embodiment of movement becomes progressively formal and performer-oriented, more reliant upon symbol, imagination, and vicarious involvement of audience.  Moreover, focus is increasingly on the embodiment of dramatic [beginning of page 208] resolution and less and less on the articulation of the conflict.  The dramatic focus changes from being almost solely upon conflict in the shorter genres to almost completely upon resolution in the fictive and static types (see Figure 2.)  With the Play III and fictive forms, we are concerned with dramatic structure -- that is, the articulation of the model of projected dramatic conflict and resolution.  This model is not available to the conversational genres, however, because there is no such projection in them, nor is it very useful in regard to the static genres.

The conversational genres underline and intensify the conflict inherent in the recurrent situation to which it is addressing itself.  But we see no actual resolution, only one which is implied or proposed.  Conversational genres attempt to promote an action rather than specifically to produce it.  In riddling and other interactive play genres also, conflict is stressed more highly than resolution.  In these activities, each component item is built on a small dramatic model, with only small resolutions occurring within the totality of the movement.  For instance, each time a person is touched in “Tag” or each time a riddle answer is given there occurs a resolution of the immediately preceding conflict but not one to the entire activity.  We have serial conflicts, in other words, without any sense of final and total resolution.  Just as there is no real winner in a game of tag, neither is there usually a declaration of the best riddler.  Because we see no real resolution, it is impossible to discern dramatic structure here, only dramatic focus.

With the more removed kinds of play activities we begin to find a greater emphasis on resolution.  This is truer of rituals than festivals, for instance, and truer of folk plays than of most folk dances.  Any time narrative movement is concerned, the outcome of the story becomes important on the strategy of the piece -- in fact, as important as the original conflict-situation.  Traditional stories are generally so well known to the audience and so stereotyped in construction that the resolution is inherent in their performance from the first word or gesture.  By the time one reaches the lyric and celebratory pieces in the fictive genres one can see clearly the result of this drift; a lament or a lyric is a relatively static embodiment in which any story accompanying a piece is either presented as having happened in the past or the performer takes for granted that the audience knows the events.  Action is stopped in favor of a consideration of emotional situation; the scene is generally depicted as occurring after action is completed.  Such [beginning of page 209] pieces take for granted some knowledge of the preceding events on the part of the audience.  This assumption accounts for the strong retrospective and allusive feeling of such genres.  Finally, the static genres present us with a fait accompli, an embodied resolution whose dramatic conflicts in many cases we must imagine and reconstruct.  As we progress along this segment of the continuum, we become more concerned with the design of the items, less with the situation they are articulating.  This focus on style and design commonly produces a feeling of potential repose, perhaps arising from the audience’s greater sense of removal from the depiction.

The strategies of all genres are directed toward influencing future action through the appeal of past usage.  The conversational genres have a direct appeal, calling for an attitude that leads to action in the near future.  Though, for instance, a superstition assumes the past usage and effectiveness of a certain attitude and practice, its rhetorical impact relies and focuses upon the immediacy of the situation and the actions that might be used to answer this problem.  The play genres, on the other hand, shift rhetorical emphasis from future action to present reenactment.  There is a clear sense of “now-ness” in a game of Hide and Seek” or even in a hero-combat play like “The Moors and the Christians.”  To be sure, charter for play comes from past practice and establishes patterns that may be used in the future, but the effectiveness of the activity relies upon its here-and-now quality.  Fictive and static genres are both presented by describing or referring to actions that have taken place in the past.  In the case of a myth or a Marchen, this is made evident by placing the story in the distant past -- by starting with “In the beginning...” in myth, or with “Once upon a time and a very long time...” in Marchen.  Nevertheless, such genres, simply by n arrating actions, give more of a renewed sense of the present moment than a lyric or a hymn, even though the story is told in the past tense.  The lyric has almost no sense of reenactment at all.

This change of focus and rhetorical technique is observable even in different types of fictional narratives.  Most Marchen, for instance, are tales of wondrous action in which we hear of startling transformations: Stupid Jack wins the money and the King’s daughter; the scullery maid becomes the princess while defeating the forces of her wicked stepmother.  On the other hand, in certain narratives like ghost legends focus on the lyrical emotion is much clearer, and the story [beginning of page 210] is told with a much stronger feeling of action recreated retrospectively.  These stories, which often explain the origin of specific local phenomena, emphasize the emotional dimension of the present situation (usually a permanent one) and relate the past action in a very brief manner.  Such a story is “La Lorona” (“The Weeping Woman”) told widely in Spanish-speaking communities in North America. (6)  The story usually begins with a description of the ghastly sounds and spectral appearance of a woman who, it is then explained, murdered her children (or they were killed through her negligence or merely absence) and who must search for them eternally.  Though we are presented here with both a conflict and a resolution, the ending is emphasized so much more strongly because we begin and end at the same place dramatically speaking and because of the permanently indeterminate nature of the resolution.
 

V

In shifts of narrative orientation such as those described, the relations among the techniques and strategies of different genres and genre groups become clearer.  To represent these is reason enough for constructing a hypothetical arrangement.  However, it is important to note that this spectrum is not so much a typological formulation as an arbitrary frame of reference that may help the investigator to have a fuller understanding of the range of techniques used in traditional expression.  It should permit fuller understanding of what diverse cultures may share and in what ways they are unique.

Thus, the ethnographer might find it useful because it would show him that the groups with which he is most concerned have a predominance of one group of genres over another.  Or it may show, as it has for me, that the group with which he is working gravitates toward one sector of the spectrum.  In this regard, there is a strong attraction (or tropism) on the part of New-World Negro groups toward play genres; both conversational and fictive genres gravitate, in other words, toward the center of the spectrum.

By this is meant that there is a discernible tendency to turn conversations into occasions for traditional repartee, or, even more, into traditional verbal contests like “playing the dozens” among adoles- [beginning of page 211] cents.  On the other hand, it means that folktales and songs are performed with the expectation that the audience will become so totally involved with the performance that they will become a functioning part of it by making audible comments and exclamations to which the performer will react.  The most extreme example of this is in some West Indian storytelling communities in which one or more members of the audience will not only sing with the narrator in a cante-fable performance, but will also take the part of one of the characters in a scene with dialogue.  In contrast to this tropism in Afro-American groups, one can discern the opposite among rural American whites, where the performer in this group commonly creates as great a sense of removal as possible while singing, playing, or telling a story. (7)

The spectrum of genres may also be useful in discerning the operational limits of the central term of the discipline, folklore.  The hypothetical arrangement has been presented to a number of audiences in the last few years, and it has almost invariably produced a slight sense of malaise as the genres near the pole of complete removal were described.  One commentator said that he should accept the scheme completely if I would just eliminate the static segment.  The anxiety revealed by such response is similar to that exhibited by most folklorists when they have traditional genres of record, especially those that involve writing.  This has been especially evident in folksong scholarship whenever the problem of broadside printings of traditional songs has been encountered; and more recently the same unwillingness to investigate has arisen around the use of the phonograph as a valid tool for folklore study. (8)  In terms of the spectrum, however, this kind of phenomenon is easily understood and described -- these are fictive items that have been made more removed through techniques of performance which have enlarged the audience; these fictive items have been transmuted into static form.

Perhaps even more troubling in this regard are a number of types of traditional expressions which find their origin and proper form in writing.  Numbered among these “peripheral” folklore genres are such expressions as autograph-album rhymes, “latrinalia,” and graffiti, chain letters, epitaphs, book inscriptions and warnings, and epigrammatic printed signs (such as those found in barrooms and restaurants).  All of these are commonly found in recorded form; yet they are generally transmitted in essentially the same way other folklore genres are, by being carried in the memory of tradition bearers and [beginning of page 212] written down by them for the proper occasions.  Since once the performer does the writing he becomes removed from his performance, these might seem to static genres.  In the process of removal they reinstitute an interpersonal approach -- they speak to each member of the audience as an individual by using the first-person point of view.  This approach becomes especially evident in epitaphs like:

 
Remember me as you pass by;
As you are now so once was I.
As I am now, so you must be,
Therefore prepare to follow me.

It is equally evident in autograph-album rhymes; each inscription is ostensibly directed toward the owner of the album, though it will obviously be read by others.

To extend my argument further, there are other expressive genres that have many traditional elements which could also be usefully placed on this spectrum but which no one would want to designate as folklore.  This performer-audience continuum, in other words, is really part of a larger spectrum in which all genres of expression, traditional or otherwise, could be placed.  The difference between folklore and other expressive phenomena is in the range of relations possible in performance.  Essentially, we distinguish between folklore and “popular culture” on the basis of dissemination (performance) methods; folklore, we say, can only exist in face-to-face encounter that leads to purely oral transmission.  The same is true, only more so, in the distinction between folklore and high art, or belles lettres.  These do not differ greatly in expressive capacity, in art, or even in the presence of traditional elements of composition.  But with the development of techniques for reproduction of artistic objects (printing, recording, lithography, and so forth), a further removal of performer and audience is made possible, and the opportunity arises for developing popular and high arts distinct from folk arts.

Viewed in this way, folklore is meaningful as a term only insofar as it designates artistic expression in which there is a certain degree of personal interrelationship between performer and audience.  When a performer loses this interpersonal approach but still attempts to entertain the populace at large (i.e., argues publicly utilizing public values), then we call this performance “popular.”  And when he restricts his audience and adapts his values to a group of educated [beginning of page 213] initiates, then we enter the realm of high art.  But insofar as all forms of expression utilize traditional conventions and genres, all are capable of being usefully compared.

By viewing expressive culture in these terms, it becomes clear that at some arbitrary point in the unarticulated -- but obviously unconsciously sensed -- spectrum of performer-audience relationships, folklorists decide that there the distance is too great to call an enactment folklore.  (Just where this “cut-off point” is varies from one folklorist to the next.)  A similar, and equally arbitrary cut-off point is observable in the realm of material folklore.  In this case, however, the relationship with which we are concerned is between maker and user, not performer and audience.  At some point in the maker-user relationship spectrum, the relationship between the two becomes so pronounced that we call it a product of technology, not material folklore.

By setting up a continuum of the sort I have, one is able to construct a frame of reference by which the genres of expressive and implemental constructs of culture can be compared.  The effect of doing so, however, is to call into some question the hard-and-fast distinction between folklore and devices of the so-called nontraditional cultures.  To be sure, it is convenient to distinguish levels of relationship between constructors (performers and makers) and utilizers (members of audience and users), but in doing so it is necessary to remember that one is establishing relative distinctions, not exclusive categories.  This point would not be important if investigators of culture -- folklorists and others -- did not insist on these distinctions as ways of defining their academic disciplines.  When terms function so exclusively they often inhibit understanding.

Ultimately, artistic expression, whether traditional or not, arises from the same impulses and shares many of the same functions in any kind of culture.  Furthermore, every artist works through conventions to some extent, but artistic activity is determined by the amount of cultural choice the performer feels free to utilize in his performance and by the ability of the artist to capitalize upon this choice.  The existence of a tradition or of traditional genres should not blind us to the fact that stylized expression on any level comes to life only through performance.  The performer and the tradition are equally essential.

[beginning of page 214]

Notes

I am indebted to many students and colleagues who discussed earlier drafts of this paper with me, suggesting important changes; most notable in this regard are Professors Francis Lee Utley, Richard M. Dorson, Alan Dundes, Linda, Degh, Ed Cray, and Americo Paredes.  I am even more in debt of the editor, Dan Ben-Amos, for suggesting painful wholesale revisions that I feel have made the argument more consistent and more economical.  The first draft of this study was written while on a grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and was delivered at the 37th Congress of Americanists, Mar Del Plata, Argentina, in September 1966.

1.  Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays, pp. 247-8.

2.  Ibid., p. 247. 

3.  Ethnographers, especially those working in Africa, have done instructive work in this area.  Some representative works are Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits, Dahomean Narrative: A Cross-Cultural Analysis (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern U. Press); D. W. Arnett, “Proverbial Lore and Word-Play of the Fulani,” Africa 27 (1957): 379-396; John Blacking, “The Social Value of Venda Riddles,” African Studies 20 (1961): 1-32; Ethel M. Albert, “‘Rhetoric,’ ‘Logic’ and ‘Poetics’ in Barundi: Culture Patterning of Speech Behavior,” American Anthropologist 66, no. 6, pt. 2 (1964): 35-54.

4.  A fuller development of thee differences is contained in my “Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory of Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore 81 (1968): 143-158.

5.   For a fuller analysis of the persuasive devices of these conversational forms, see my study, “A Rhetoric of Everyday Life: Traditional Conversational Genres,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 32 (1968): 44-59.

6.  For a recent discussion of this story with some versions, see Bess Lomax Hawes, “La Llorona in Juvenile Hall,” Western Folklore 27 (1968): 153-170. 

7.   For a discussion of these aesthetic techniques in regard to the Anglo-American tradition, see me “Patterns of Structure and Role Relationships in the Child Ballads in the United States,” Journal of American Folklore 79 (1966): 448-462.  West Indian patterns are described in my “The Shaping of Folklore Traditions in the British West Indies,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 9 (1967): 456-480, and  “Public Drama and Common Values in Two Caribbean Islands,” Trans-Action 5, no. 8 (July-August 1968): 62-71.

8.   A situation often discussed by D. K. Wilgus.  See, for instance, his “The Rationalist Approach” in A Good Tale and a Bonnie Tune, ed., Wilson Hudson (Dallas, Tex.: SMU Press, 1964), pp. 227-237.