Listening to old voices : folklore, life stories, and the elderly / Patrick B. Mullen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mullen, Patrick B., 1941-

Series:

Folklore and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Folklore--Blue Ridge Mountains.

Folklore.

Folklore--Ohio.

Older people--Blue Ridge Mountains--Folklore.

Older people.

Older people--Ohio--Folklore.

Ohio.

Physical Description:

xii, 292 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [1992]

Summary:

Patrick Mullen examines how elderly people use folk traditions to engage others and pass on their wisdom and knowledge to succeeding generations. Based on interviews with nine people in their seventies and eighties who live in rural Virginia, North Carolina, and southern Ohio, this book shows how folklore enriches people's lives. Mullen places the folklore - local legends, jokes, personal-experience narratives, family history, folk medicine, planting signs, foodways, wood carving, belief systems, customs, folk architecture - within the context of the individuals' life stories and the culture of their local communities. The analysis concentrates on recurring themes in each person's folklore and the rhetorical strategies the storytellers use to interest listeners and assure that their traditions will be passed on.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [279]-290) and index.

ISBN:

0252018087

OCLC:

22909247