Free Access to the Past is an intriguing collection of essays on the changes in the perception of history and cultural heritage that happened in the early-nineteenth century. Romanticism and revolutions created a situation in which both modernization and a nostalgia for the past became two key elements of European thinking, and this change was reflected in many ways—through the development of new museums and libraries, for instance, but also in the development of new disciplines like folklore studies.
Two of the essays deal specifically with topics in the history of folklore studies. Joep Leerssen’s essay, “From Bökendorf to Berlin: Private Careers, Public Sphere, and How the Past Changed in Jacob Grimm’s Lifetime” (55-70), examines a group of scholars called the “Bökendorf Circle,” a group of men who all were “aficionados of popular culture.” The group included both Jacob Grimm and Grimm’s mentor Friedrich Carl von Savigny. As Leerssen notes, von Savigny was the person who introduced Grimm to the legal antiquities that were so important in Grimm’s career, as well as to works like Reinhart Fuchs, which Grimm would later edit. Grimm’s work on legal antiquities and customs, though now often forgotten by folklorists, is one of the key works in the study of folk law. The image of Grimm that emerges from the essay is rather different from the one usually encountered; as Leerssen writes, “Grimm liked to project the image of a reticent backroom scholar quietly working, with frugal and high-minded dedication, on his books; but he was a networker who cultivated enmities as well as alliances” (69). But Leerssen is also very good on the ideas that Grimm shared with these other scholars and the influence he had on contemporaries and later readers. As Leerssen writes, “Grimm, the great modernizer in the humanities, imparted to his contemporaries and successors [a] strong…sense of the national past as an ongoing, commanding presence in the public sphere” (70).
The second essay in which the history of folklore studies plays an important part is Paula Henrikson’s essay, “Inventing Literary Heritage: National Consciousness and Editorial Scholarship in Sweden, 1810-1830” (103-125). Henrikson examines the history of editing vernacular texts in the period, which includes ballad editing. An important collection of ballads came out in Sweden at this time, Svenska folk-visor från forntiden (Swedish Folk Songs from Ancient Times) edited by E. G. Geijer and A. A. Afzelius. As Henrikson writes, one of the most important aspects of this collection was Geijer’s introduction, which puts forth the idea of the ballads as “national assets” (113). Given that the ballads were so important, it was also important for editors to present the best texts they could, and thus the texts in Svenska folk-visor från forntiden are presented with “eclectic emendations” designed to create the best text possible of each ballad (116). Editorial work also affected the perception of the historical past through the texts: editing, according to Henrikson, is “a way of historicizing texts [through which] literature loses its timeless essence, to the benefit of historical transformation, to a history of reception” (125, emphasis in the original). Editing is not often discussed in folklore studies, but Henrikson’s essay again emphasizes the reasons that it should be a central part of our discussions of the texts we produce.
Other essays in the volume that are of folkloric interest include Eveline C. Bouwers’ “Public Commemorations and Private Interests: The Politics of State Funerals in London and Paris, 1806-1810,” which looks at the social dynamics and symbolism of public funerals and mourning connected with the funerals of prominent people, and Ellinoor Bergvelt’s “Potgeiter’s ‘Rijksmuseum’ and the Public Presentation of Dutch History in the National Museum” (1800-1844)," which looks at how museum exhibits in the Dutch National Museum were used to shape perceptions of Dutch history.
The discipline of folklore emerged, as these essays show, in a cultural and social context in which attitudes toward the past were changing, and in which many people were concerned both to preserve what was in danger of being lost and to make things important to national cultural heritage accessible to everyone. This is thus an important volume for anyone interested in understanding the wider social and cultural contexts of folklore study in the nineteenth century—which still often affect our discipline—but also for scholars concerned with the role of nostalgia in culture, modernization, national histories, and cultural heritage.
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[Review length: 728 words • Review posted on January 16, 2012]