The Anatomy of Frivolity (On Taking Nonsense Seriously)

Abstract

Thomas Kuhn (1962) portrays scientific enterprise as periodically evolv­ing toward the discovery of the invisible, as the paradigms of normal science are modified to accommodate anomalous empirical observations. The history of folklore studies exhibits an interesting variation on this theme, the periodic enfranchisement of topics previously considered too trivial to merit serious scholarly attention. Folkloristic treatises are laden with gratuitous apologies and other gestures of hesitancy, reflecting the folklorist's anticipation of resistance to what is likely to be perceived as an excursion into the trivial. This rite of deprecation has been played out in a number of arenas, over a period of two centuries offolkloristic inquiry. At the dawn of systematic folkloristics, Bishop Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) characterizes his materials as 'rude survivals of the past, deserving of a certain amount of attention as illustrating the language, the numbers, the beliefs and customs of bygone days, although as poetry they had no intrinsic value' (quoted in Bluestein 1962). A modern echo of this same attitude can be found in Roger Abrahams's Deep Down in the Jungle: Negro Narrative Lore ji·om the Streets of Philadelphia (1964). Discussing sound patterning in one of the couplets in his collection, Abrahams throws in the caveat that 'this is not great poetry', but it is nonetheless worthy of some attention (1964: l05).