Folklore an Introduction to History, Art & Literature

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Folklore: An Introduction to History, Art & Literature

Childrens literature, fairy tales and folklore have their origins

in the medieval dark ages when the masses, adults and children

alike, were illiterate compared to a relatively small group of rul-

ing elite. Although official history as told by various conquerors

reflects the development of trade routes and weapons to defend

those trade routes, folklore by contrast is history told by common

folk. It has deep roots in public education at a time when super-

stition was rampant. As we shall see, there are legitimate reasons

why this genre of wizards, witches, warlocks and elves has en-

dured through the ages. The above image, for instance, is how the

illiterate were taught to read. What is more, according to Nie-tzsche, folklore is the happy medium between communicating

with the use of images and communication that does not use im-

ages, such as music. (1). Nietzsche makes this a distinction be-

F is for Fishermans Luck

Fairy Tales ABCs

McLoughlin Brothers, 1870s


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Tales From the Enchanted Forest

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tween Apollonian and Dionysian art consecutively, both names

of Greek gods.

History prior to the development of the printing press is classi-

fied by ages: the stone age, bronze age & iron age, the goldenage of enlightenment during the 5th century, the dark ages of

the medieval period, followed by the Renaissance of the 14-16th

centuries. The European Renaissance was a revival of 5th centu-

ry ideals with a new twist; the development of the printing press

and literacy for the masses. This was followed by the industrial

age to what may be currently described as the information age,

or the technological revolution due to the internet. As with thetechnological revolution, the development of the printing press

was responsible for disseminating large amounts of information

and education to the masses unprecedented in history.

The development of trade routes and increasingly sophisti-

cated weapons beginning with stone and iron to defend those

routes, the invention of the printing press and the internet com-

bined have created a global system of world trade and a global

education for children as well.

Many forks in the road occurred between official history,

art and literature and that of the common folk as they gained

skills in literacy. Well highlight some of those forks in the road,

the schools of thought and art movements, their impact upon

the common folk and how the folk impacted art. This book maybe considered a form of folklore and folk art. We hope it will

provide inspiration to the elementary artist and the child, as the

Renaissance did to the newly literate masses.

In some ways certain ages of antiquity were socially and ar-

tistically superior to our modern corporate culture. In a world

without newspapers or books, there was a certain liveliness to

the social climate of the first century we might find lacking

on Main Street today. Dion Chrysostrom, who lived in 70

A.D. gives an account of city life in his day:


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One may see in all the crowd and cram and

crush everyone calmly doing his own business;

the piper piping and teaching to pipe often in the

streets with his pupils, while the crowd passes by

and does not interfere with him; the trainer pro-

ducing his dancers for a stage play without notic-

ing a few fights going on; most remarkable of all,

schoolmasters sit in the streets with their boys,

teaching or learning for all that multitudinous

mob. I myself saw people doing all sorts of things

there, piping, dancing, one giving a show, onereciting a poem, one singing, one reading a story

or fable, and not one of them preventing anyone

else from his own particular business. (2)

As in the first century described above, and the golden age of

the fifth century as well (during which time lived Socrates and

Confucius), education and literature during the medieval dark

ages of the 12-13th centuries were reserved for the wealthy eliteand the masses were by comparison ignorant. Books were hand-

written and too expensive to produce on a scale large enough to

educate the masses. They were often bound in animal skin called

vellum and written in Latin.

Wealthy patrons hired artists to produce illustrated books of

devotional material called illuminated manuscripts. The most

famous of these is The Book of Hours produced by the three

Limbourg brothers for the Duke of Berry. These artists were

later commissioned to illustrate a Bible. All three brothers

died during the bubonic plague. The plague was believed

by some to be a punishment from God and was used by the

Church to lead their followers to repentance.

One example of a later version of an illuminated manu-

script for children is found at the beginning of this intro-

duction, Fairytale ABCs by the McLoughlin brothers. The


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cost of an original illuminated manuscript today ranges from the

hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The cost of the

graphic at the beginning of this introduction is in the public do-

main due to copyright expiration and such images can be pur-

chased for only a few dollars.

Patrons of the arts were especially fond of having themselves

portrayed in the company of saints in their illuminated manu-

scripts. Perhaps their love of saints was due to the fact that the

only literate class besides themselves were priests. Another possi-

ble rationale, given the special emphasis on art during this time

period is that their devotion and patronage of the arts earnedthem a special place in heaven. After all, even the great banking

family, the Medicis, fostered art, as well as many Popes.

The European Renaissance which followed the medieval dark

ages is a commonly accepted starting point from which to examine

the masses so-called emergence from the darkness of ignorance

and superstition to the enlightenment of education and the hope

of social, economic and political mobility by the underclasses that

came with it.

It begins with the proto-Renaissance (pre-Renaissance) of the 12

-13th centuries, followed by the Renaissance of the 14-15th centu-

ries, reaching its peak during the High Renaissance of the 16th

century when Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint

the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.With the development of the printing press in Germany in 1440,

the first Bible was mass-produced called the Gutenberg Bible. Dur-

ing this same time period, Martin Luther challenged the Catholic

Church and the Protestant religion emerged. As the Protestant

church moved in the direction of humanism, fewer angels were

depicted in religious art. Catholic Michelangelo, however, did not

waiver from his belief in angels, nor his apparent belief in God as asource of inspiration, clearly depicted in his masterpiece Creation

of Adam. But his contemporary, Raphael, pursued yet another

school of thought; philosophy, which was a neo-Platonic revival of


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the fifth century Golden Age. This marked a significant fork in

the road between official art sponsored by the government, reli-

gious art sponsored by the churches, and the landscape genre

which was to come soon after. Some schools of thought practiced

bringing order out of chaos as a form of idealism, while others

advocated realism. In a charming example of the abhorrence for

chaos written in the 1700s, a French Catholic missionary de-

scribes Niagara Falls as:

falling from a horrible precipice, foaming and

boiling after the most hideous manner imaginable,

and making an outrageous noise and dismal roar-ing, more terrible than thunder. (3)

Such irreverence for nature would be unthinkable to those art-

ists producing the landscape genre a short while later but travel

literature had emerged with the development of the printing

press, and this piece was feasibly written to entertain an audi-

ence back home in France.

Proto-Renaissance art progressed from flat surfaced, one-dimensional paintings and sculpture to multi-dimensional works

of art that included weather and atmosphere, light, shadows, per-

spective, gestures, and the folds of drapery. Even sculpture ad-

vanced to portraying the folds of drapery in marble.

Some were offended by the attempts to portray divinity in art

altogether and the iconoclast movement began as the Protestants

moved toward humanism. Catholicism and Protestantism contin-

ued to use imagery to gain as yet illiterate converts and eventual-

ly both churches sought new converts in the Americas during a

time period called the Counter-Revolution; thus Europe brought

its unresolved conflicts to the new world. America was viewed

by the European immigrants as the promised land and a restored

Garden of Eden, but not for the Indians, who were subject to agenocide that reduced their population by more than a million

people. These indigenous hunting and gathering societies were

converted to cattle ranching and farming. As with the bubonic


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plague, rats brought new diseases to the indigenous populations

who were without prior exposure or immunity. The sacred texts

of the indigenous populations were burned. The temples of the

South American Incas, Aztecs and Mayans were superimposed

with Western architecture and Christian churches were built up-

on the very ruins of the temples of the conquered tribes. Archi-

tecture is an art. In its ideal form, architecture attracts business

and tourism to the city of God, parishioners in the case of

churches, and hospitals in the case of the Bubonic plague (4). It

also symbolizes mans conquest over nature.

Meanwhile in the East, China, Japan and Korea, found a hap-py medium in geometrical architecture surrounded by asymmet-

rical gardens and landscapes. Unfortunately, an in-depth study

of Eastern art is outside the scope of this work. In fact, the earli-

est origins of the printing press are found in China and Korea,

but our focus here is on the Western Renaissance.

All great artists travelled to Italy. The city of Florence was a

haven to which artists of every sort fled. During his pilgrimage

across the mountains to Italy, Piter Bregel the Elder developed

the landscape genre. He later merged his art with literary prov-

erbs and another technique for educating the illiterate masses

with images and morals was born. This work was called The

Netherlandish Proverbs. In this piece, village peasants are engaged

in a variety of proverbial activity associated with the underclass

as perceived by the elite, such as one man beating his head

against a wall. Our variation of this is called A Montage of Prov-

erbs, and it is found on the last page of this introduction.

In his mastery of the landscape genre, Bregel used nature as

the greater backdrop and humanity as the lessor subject matter

in the forefront, creating the effect that man is subject to nature

and not the other way around. This created a popular world-upside-down debate at the time and there remains some ques-

tion amongst scholars as to whose side Bregel was on, the peas-

antry or the elite. (5) The elite had counter-acted with an art


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movement of their own to keep the poor peasants in their place.

To the elite, order meant obedience by the peasantry. They con-

tributed to stereotyping the lower classes and thwarting their up-

ward mobility with images of war heroes, villains, shepherds,

farmers and fools. Hogenberg and Ewout Muller of Amsterdam

portrayed the activities of the peasantry and their heroic efforts to

overcome their lot as foolish and subversive. (6) A popular theme

that emerged was virtue versus folly. The peasantry sought

to eliminate the stereotypes the elite had caste upon them by

creating the folklore genre artist as hero, and the elite as

fraudulent villains. Folklore aimed at an egalitarian ethos (7)

and some scholars now view folklore as the social and unofficial

history of the peasantry in their conflicts with the elite. (8)

Meanwhile, Catholic priest Desiderius Erasmus challenged the

Latin translation of the Bible, restored it to Greek, criticized the

folly of the church and art altogether, and attempted to reform

monks who were fond of wine, women and song and loathe to

work.

Folklore triumphed as a literary genre in the 1800s. Queen Eliz-

abeth I implemented the public school during the Protestant

Reformation so the poor peasants might have as good an educa-

tion as she did. By now the common folk could read and write.

Hans Christian Anderson produced The Ugly Duckling, famous for

its underlying message of the artist as social outcast until he is re-united with his true family of swans. Additionally he produced

The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina, and The Little Mermaid.

The Grimms brothers produced Snow White, Hansel and Gretel

and others, until they were exiled from the Kingdom of Hanover

for putting up a resistance to royal absolutism. The Berlin Acade-

my of Sciences took them under their umbrella so they could pro-

duce a dictionary. (9) Since Socrates and Plato, childrens litera-

ture has never been without its social radicals and revolutionaries.

Early indications of folk lore are found in The Piper of Hamelin.

The legend behind the Pied Piper is that a man hired himself to


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rid Hamelin of rats and when he was not paid for his work, he

lured children from the village who were enchanted by his flute.

Rats and lice are attributed to the cause of the Bubonic plague in

1347-1348 which eliminated 50% of Europes population. Factual

support for the disappearance of numerous children is found in

the 15th century Luenenberg manuscript which reads:

In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and

Paul on 26 June, 130 children born in Hamelin

(Hameln, Germany) were seduced by a piper

dressed in all kinds of colors and lost at the place of

execution near the koppen. (10)It is said that the childhood song ring around the rosies, a

pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down was written

about a village that had to be burned to the ground due to the

plague. In Discovering the Global Past, author Merry Weisner

suggests that the rhyme was intended to make certain future gen-

erations never forgot the plague (11). There are those who dispute

this, claiming the limerick was written in the 18th century. Manygreat artists died during the plague, including Ambrosio Lo-

renzetti, famous for his masterpieces, The Effects of Good Govern-

ment and The Effects of Bad Government.

Many nursery rhymes and fairy tales are believed to have

been written about actual historical events. Mary, Mary, quite

contrary is said to have been written about Mary, Queen of Scots,

Catholic, cousin to Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Mary Queen of

Scots was convicted of treason for plotting to overthrow her

cousin. The Emperors New Clothes by the brothers Grimm is said to

have been written about Julius Caesar because Rome was then

seen as a naked tyranny. According to child psychologist Bruno

Bettelheim, the genie in the bottle originated from a German-Swiss

doctor named Theophrastus Bombastus , the first doctor to putmedicine in bottles. (12)

The earliest printed version of Little Red Cape (Little Red Riding

Hood) Is Charles Perraults 1697 version. Perrault was one of the


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first folk tale authors, next to Aesop, to draw from classical Greek

literature and state an explicit moral at the end of the story:

Children, especially attractive, well-bread

young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if

they do so, they may well provide dinner for a

wolf. I say wolf but there are various kinds of

wolves. There are also those who are charming,

quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent and sweet,

who pursue young women at home and in the

streets. And unfortunately it is these gentle wolves

who are the most dangerous ones of all. (13)Walter Crane created a wood-cut illustration for Little Red Cape

(wood cuts were originally used for printing) and went on to both

write and illustrate numerous folk tales including Sing A Song of

Sixpence and One, Two, Buckle my Shoe. He added another quality

to educating the illiterate he made learning fun. Another well-

known trick of the trade that developed was to eliminate adult

intervention as far as possible, and allow children to discover cre-

ative solutions to difficult challenges on their own. Hansel and

Gretel, for instance, provides visual imagery of a childlike sense of

abandonment. In spite of the fear factor, children are enchanted

and filled with admiration at Hansels clever use of bread-crumbs

and stones to trace his path home.

Folk tales as art are external representations of internal psycho-logical processes. They are often placed in pastoral settings with

town-weary folk as celebrities, are larger than life, and represent

struggles to overcome difficult circumstances. They are rife with

social, political and economical absurdities which children relish.

Witches, warlocks and ogres represent real dangers in the world,

hostile forces , prejudices and obstacles which one must overcome

to fulfill a goal. Identifying which forces are real and which arefictitious develops courage (14). Then as now, to many adults the-

se figures are mere superstition, but to others they are very real,

thus the controversy surrounding J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter and


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the Sorcerers Stone. The moral at the end of folklore suggests if

nothing else that there is something to be learned from reading,

and, of course, this technique was another tool used by the church

to both educate and teach the newly literate morals.

Shortly after the development of the printing press, however,

publishing companies began printing the best classical books at

very inexpensive prices. (15) A great deal of original material was

lost in these translations, including translations of the Bible. The

most famous work of art resulting from a Biblical mistranslation

is MichelangelosMoses. The marble sculpture depicts Moses de-

scending from Mount Sinai with two horns on his head, resem-bling a devil, rather than two rays of light emanating from his

head, as described in the original translation. (16)

Hogenberg and Ewout Muller were correct; the innovations of

the lower classes did indeed result in great folly at times. Never-

theless the remarkable advances made in art , literature, and the

quality of life for the underclasses compensated for it.

It had always been the goal of the Catholic church, Michelan-

gelo especially, to prove the existence of God. The flat-surfaced,

one-dimensional paintings of the proto-Renaissance were now

multi-dimensional, and artists had indeed proven that there is

more than meets the eye. This achievement of Renaissance artists

may be compared to the recognition that a square has multiple

dimensions in the form of a cube, rather than one. Literature is

perceived as one-dimensional art, that is text on paper, but litera-

ture also uses literary images to demonstrate there is more than

meets the eye. These images are most notably found in the Bible.

Iconoclasts have not objected to this form of imagery, however, to

any degree close to their objections to the portrayal of divinity in

art .

It may in fact be the hidden meaning, that which is not seen,that which is not spelled out, the second or third dimension, the

ideal rather than the real, the symbols and the imagination that

engage children to fairy tales and folk lore. Symbolism has always


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played a large role in art and although I have not discussed it here,

I have included a list of commonly recognized symbols at the back

of this book. A forest symbolizes a place of testing, for example.

Crossing a bridge symbolizes making a transition. A cube symbol-

izes the end of a cycle of immobility.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I learned to read fairy tales

and I decided I wanted to be a fairy-tale writer when I grew up.

Once again, I have to say Hogenberg and Ewout Muller were

right. Great folly has been committed in this pursuit, not the least

of which is directly related to ignorance about mathematics and

the unyielding specifications of the printing press. Ive actuallyawaken from a nightmare where columns of text were pillars of

Roman architecture in symbol. It behooves the budding author,

then, to learn a bit about the transition from illuminated manu-

scripts to the commercial printing press, lest midway through the

process one is facing the ghost of Erasmus and his admonishments

for playing with complex questions, and second childhoods. (17) It

is entirely feasible that a whole new genre of horror stories can be

written on this subject matter alone.

I studied a bit of art in college and Id like to study it further. A

great deal of my study on the folk genre has been supplemented

by independent study. There is at least one fact I feel I can author-

itatively conclude about the genre: a child who grows up in the

company of Kings & Queens, Princes & Princesses, paupers &fools, has a greater likelihood of pursuing a higher education and

learning about monarchies, Queen Elizabeth I, public education

versus private Catholic schools, The French Revolution, the

American Revolution, the Native American Indian holocaust, The

American Constitution, and so on.

Ideally, I hope to inspire the same love of learning that was in-

stilled in me when I learned to read, either by studying inde-pendently or pursuing a formal education. Indeed, the Public Li-

brary opened in 1571 courtesy of the Medici family of Florence

that all might have access to learning via independent study.


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A Montage of Proverbs

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From top left to bottom right: Let sleeping dogs lie, laughter is the best

medicine, money talks, dont cry over spilled milk, youll catch more flies

with honey than vinegar.


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End Notes

2

(1) Benton, Janetta Rebold, Arts & Culture, ( Saddle River, Pearson Edu-

cation, Inc., 2008), pg. 288.

(2) Graves-Rouse, John Clive, Great Dialogues of Plato, (N.Y., The New

American Library of World Lit.., Inc., 1956), pg. 7.

(3) Artz, Frederick B., From the Renaissance to Romanticism, (Chicago,The University of Chicago Press, 1962), pg. 164.

(4) Kleiner, Fred S., Gardners Art Through the Ages, (Boston, Thomson

Higher Education, 2009), pg. 502.

(5) Kunzle, David, Bruegels Proverb Painting and the World Upside Down,

(Art Bulletine, June 77, vol. 59, Issue 2), pg. 202.

(6) ibid, pg. 201.

(7) Perrie, Maureen, Folklore as Evidence of Peasant Mentalitie: Social Atti-tudes and Values in Russian Popular Culture, (The Russian Review,

1989, vol. 48, No. 2), pg. 127.

(8) ibid, pg. 119.

(9) Damrosh, David, The Longman Anthology, World Literature, vol. D,

(N.Y., Pearson Education, Inc., 2009), pg. 192.

(10) Rerez-Cuervo, Maria, J., The Lost Children of Hamelin, Retrieved on

Dec. 31, 2011, www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/3805/

the_lost_children_of_hamelin.html.

(11) Weisner, Merry, Discovering the Global Past: A Look at the Evi-

dence, (Boston, Houghlin Mifflin Co., 2007), pg. 379.

(12) Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment, (N.Y., Alfred A.

Knopf, 1976), pg. 316.

(13) Ashliman, D.L., Charles Perraults Mother Goose Tales, Retrieved on

Dec. 31, 2011, www.pitt.edu/~dash/perrault02.html.

(14) Sterling & Scott, Plato: The Republic, (N.Y., W.W. Norton & Co.,

1985), p.p. 128-136.

(15) Flemming, William, Arts & Ideas, (N.Y., Holt, Rinehart & Winston,

Inc., 3rd Ed.), pg. 292.

(16) ibid, pg. 271.

(17) Erasmus, Desiderus, The Praise of Folly, Retrieved on Dec. 31, 2011,

www.information.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/

etexts05/7efly10.htm.(18) Kline, Daniel, Medieval Literature for Children, (N.Y., Routledge,

2003), pp.1-10.


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Author Deborah Khora is currently pursuing an Associates Degree inArts & Humanities and Behavioral & Social Sciences at Folsom Lake

College in California.


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Illustrator Karen Hunziker currently exhibits her work at GoldCountry Artists Gallery in Placerville, California.


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Folklore an Introduction to History, Art & Literature

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