Research Into Mormon Folklore
Alta S. and Austin E. Fife are generally recognized as the founders of research into Mormon folklore, a discipline that has expanded greatly since the couple’s initial work in the 1930s. Although previous and contemporary scholars had briefly addressed the issue, the Fifes expanded the field, both through their collection, now known as the Fife Folklore Archive, held at the Merrill-Cazier Library on the Utah State University campus in Logan, Utah. Their book on Mormon folklore, Saints of Sage and Saddle, was published in 1956. This book, according to folklorist Jill Terry Rudy, “remains the most complete book-length treatment of Mormon folklore” (144).
Folklorist William A. Wilson also specialized in Mormon folklore. According to Wilson, “the performance of folklore—whether it provides us with delight and amusement or causes us to fear and tremble—is one of our most fundamental human activities” (2006, 203). Wilson also explains that Mormon folklore often affirms the group’s beliefs that God speeds the right, a belief implying that people who do the Lord's work may receive divine protection; however, Wilson qualifies his claim by saying, “I am not foolish enough to argue that the missionaries endure only because of their folklore. They endure primarily because they are committed to their gospel and convinced of the importance of their work. But that conviction is constantly bolstered and maintained by the lore they have created," and reaffirming that "the significance of folklore performance is that it helps them keep up the fight” and endure to the end (2006, 218).
Read more about this topic: Mormon Folklore
Famous quotes containing the words research into, research, mormon and/or folklore:
“The great question that has never been answered and which I have not get been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a women want?””
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“If you excommunicate one of us there will be 10 more to step up and take her place. Excommunicate those 10 and there will be 100 to take their places.”
—Lynn Knavel Whitesides, U.S. Mormon feminist. As quoted in the New York Times, p. 7 (October 2, 1993)
“Someday soon, we hope that all middle and high school will have required courses in child rearing for girls and boys to help prepare them for one of the most important and rewarding tasks of their adulthood: being a parent. Most of us become parents in our lifetime and it is not acceptable for young people to be steeped in ignorance or questionable folklore when they begin their critical journey as mothers and fathers.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)