Review of Tradition in the Twenty-First Century: Locating the Role of the Past in the Present ed. by Trevor J. Blank and Robert Glenn Howard

Abstract

The editors of Tradition in the Twenty-First Century are to be heartily congratulated for assembling a lively set of readings that raise important issues, ask useful questions, and offer lines of thought with the capacity to focus, refine, and extend the folkloristic encounter with perhaps its core intellectual construct, the elusive yet necessary concept of tradition. Trevor J. Blank and Robert Glenn Howard are forthright in their introduction about wanting to stimulate discussion rather than provide facile answers, and the essays gathered here can hardly be said to advance a coherent program for dealing with tradition in the present century. Indeed, they do not even advance a consensual definition of the term. What they do accomplish, and this is perhaps a fitting accolade, is to convey a conviction that tradition remains a fruitful topic of contemplation, and, moreover, that folklorists have a vested interest in pursuing this field of contemplation and indeed have something special to say about it.