Exotic Dreams in the Science of the Volksgeist traces how colonial influences shaped the development of European folklore studies between the mid-eighteenth century and the Second World War. Following a number of overlapping developments across the domains of literature, philosophy, history, philology, ethnology, and anthropology, the book illustrates how ideas rooted in a growing awareness of an exotic, non-European world filtered into the European intellectual currents that gave rise to folkloristics as a seemingly inward-facing domestic ethnography. Questioning the purity of this domestic emphasis, Diarmuid Ó Giolláin posits that in the expanding and volatile Europe of the time, with its various shifting centers and peripheries, notions of the domestic and the exotic became fundamentally intertwined. Accordingly, the majority of the book focuses on tracing the history of the development of European folklore studies according to scholars “whose ethnography had both domestic and colonial dimensions” (25).
Ó Giolláin begins by considering the extent to which colonial influences on European folklore studies are present in the current literature on disciplinary histories. He points out that while regionalism and colonialism have some presence, nationalism is favored as the predominant frame. This emphasis on nationalism, especially in nation-states that are not directly associated with the nexus of colonial pursuits, tends to overshadow how colonial thought permeated the local and the domestic, particularly at a scholarly level. To address this, the author highlights how, from late eighteenth-century encounters with non-Western peoples, ideas of primitivism, heroic societies, and oral tradition became prominent topics that shaped many scholarly disciplines. Accordingly, a recurring theme throughout the book is the influence of Ossian in popularizing the collection and valorization of oral poetry as a means to capture and narrate ennobled national origins. Further, Ó Giolláin places a strong emphasis on the role of language in the development of folklore studies, labelling philological research as “folklore’s half-twin for much of its nineteenth-century history” (331). This relationship is rooted in German scholars who, through the study of Indo-European languages, were searching for German roots in a proposed more ancient, nobler, and purer Aryan origin.
In terms of structure, chapter 1 outlines the political, geographical, intellectual, and scientific contexts within which the ethnological sciences developed. This provides what the author calls the coordinates from which to chronicle more specific developments in France (chapter 2), Italy (chapter 3), and Ireland (chapter 4). Chapters 2 to 4 each represent a distinct type of European state formation: France as a nation-state with an ethnic continuity that developed from a centralized dynastic core; Italy as a transitional nation-state that, while having its own ruling class, lacked unified statehood; and Ireland as a nation-state that formed through conflict between a local ethnic group and its foreign ruling class. These different types of nation-states allow the author to consider the development of folklore studies relative to the tensions that arose from changing and competing centralized and regional identities. Related and notable is the recurring theme of the differences between sea-borne and land-based expansion, the former resulting in radical encounters of ethnic difference, the latter bringing about more gradual changes between different ethnic identities. This contrast between different types of ethnic encounters provides an essential framework for interpreting the various trajectories of historical developments that Ó Giolláin narrates.
While the book covers a wide range of topics, including ethnicity, race, and evolution, its focus on the careers and exploits of specific scholars offers useful insights into how ideas were transported across nations and disciplines due to overlaps between political and disciplinary pursuits. These scholars include Johann Gottfried Herder (chapter 1), Arnold van Gennep (chapter 2), Lamberto Loria (chapter 3), and Douglas Hyde (chapter 4). Ó Giolláin positions Herder as a prototypical figure of the time, placing his influential ideas on cultural relativism—rooted in travel writing, ethnographic works, and preferences for studying peoples untouched by European influence—as central to how notions of the domestic became infused with the exotic. Importantly, Herder was instrumental in defining what became folkloristics as a discipline tasked with rescuing the Volksgeist from crumbling under the pressures of modern progress and cultural assimilation. This, to an extent, speaks to the crux of the book: what was being “rescued” was based on an exotic idea of domestic purity. In terms of van Gennep and Loria, Ó Giolláin points out that “the travels of such figures in what were often recently pacified territories were possible because of the existence of a military-supported colonial infrastructure on which they could draw” (218). This added a particularly colonial dimension to their—especially earlier—work; an influence to be considered as they later returned to, respectively, France and Italy, as significant influences on the development of localized European folklore studies.
Similarly, the influence of Douglas Hyde, who later became the first president of Ireland, is contextualized relative to his time in British North America. In all these cases, the book draws our attention to both wider and deeper historical trajectories, in which key figures are located beyond their purely European associations. Interestingly, the chapter on Ireland takes a slightly more intimate tone, focusing heavily on language and offering a more nuanced insight into the exchange of ideas between authors and scholars of the associated region and time. Here, Ó Giolláin strongly returns to the various themes of the book, particularly the influence of Ossian, hinting to some extent that the rest of the book is in service of this chapter as much as this chapter is in support of the general argument.
While, at times, the core of Ó Giolláin’s argument gets lost in his intricately chronicled histories, the book succeeds in bringing an acute awareness to the nuances and complexities inherent in the manifold influences that shaped European folklore studies. Particularly useful are the index of persons and the index of places which capture the core value of the book as a reference work.
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[Review length: 975 words • Review posted on December 14, 2024]