Chapter 6 Reflection

Chapter six of "Living Folklore" presented us with a variety of ways in which modern day folklorists have approached the problem of accurately defining and categorizing different types of folklore. It is amazing to me just how difficult and meticulous of a task it is. There are millions and millions of types of folklore in existence, and each of them has its own unique connection to the culture from which it was born. Even more detailed is how it relates to the person who created the piece. As I read, I felt that just about all of the strategies of analyzing different elements of folklore had useful approaches to the problem. The main approaches the book described included a Functionalist approach, a Structuralist approach, a Psycho-analytical approach, and Post-structural approaches. I feel that benefits offered by the Functionalist approach and the Structural approach cover the most ground as far as classifying goes. Functionalist approaches help to understand the purpose of certain elements as it pertains to the particular group who employs them. For example, the book takes a glance at a particular folk tale such as "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and shows how Functionalism attempts to discover for what purpose the story was created and why it is used. The structural approach is beneficial as well because it looks at underlying characteristics that seem to permeate a broad range of related folk elements such as stories. However, each approach to the analyzing of folk elements do have disadvantages and major problems associated with them, so I feel that the best way to approach the problem is by using methods of combining several strategies together to best understand the pieces of folklore that we study.