Very Simply...
Folklore is anything that people do, say, use, or express, within all of our communal societies. It seems that one could bravely say that...
"If any subjective or objective thing is relative to people in any way, then that thing is likely folkloric in some manner."
Academic study of any folkloric material is sometimes referred to as, "folkloristics." For this entire web project then, let it be known that for any "folkloric material" presented here, one should at least attempt to consider that "matter" from such a deeper intellectual, "folkloristic" perspective.
3 Traits That Makes A Thing Folkloric:
Briefly, there are 3 characteristics any thing needs to have in order to be realized as folklore, and these characteristics are as follows:
- A thing needs to be creative.
- It needs to be communally based.
- It needs to subversive, deviant, and/or non-institutional in origin.
Thus, keeping an eye on all those cumulative concepts seems to be the most important thing one needs to do (to accept, understand, and hold onto) in order to begin to approach anything from a folkloric perspective. If a thing does meet these three criteria, then it is most likely folkloric, to some degree. That is probably even true, even if there is no audience present to witness that thing as folklore, at the time. For instance, any primitive dance ritual certainly meets all the necessary criteria so that it is definitely folkloric; and yet, that folkloric aspect remains a constant even if there may be no outsiders present to view the dance, as such. Moreover, it is just this sort of "self-sustainability," if you will, that is really what allows a folkloric matter to be transferred across time and space, perhaps.
Here is a playlist of folkloric narratives for your enjoyment and for beginning to contemplate just what folklore might be (individual videos can be accessed at YouTube.com by clicking the "linked" title).
Folklore - Narratives (not all pool related):
From a bit more of a moral perspective...
Of course, a piece of folkloric matter does not just start to become folklore once some academic person says that it is so... and we, as a philosophical audience, just have to try remember that fact.
What is more, those folks whom are practicing the folklore need not ever come to understand their rituals from any deeper perspective than what they already do (accept it as). In fact, pressing such a complex, intellectual perspective (of a folklore) upon some base practitioner (one whom is not already seeking out such personal expansion and complication), is not only morally wrong, but doing so might corrupt the integrity of the folklore (and the folkloric life), even to a destructive degree. Still, that idea might imply that the mere existence of this project (especially, its wider accessibility on the web), along with all of its intellectual implications, might somehow infiltrate and infect a relatively unwilling "pool community" with the "outrageous" concepts and claims of the of the folkloric discipline.
Nonetheless, I might argue that the mere presence of any Internet traveller here, be he/she a pool player or not, is willing, even wanting, to expand his/her horizons by exploring the web in the first place. Furthermore, any person whom is not ready or willing to expand his/her outlook on life (at least in this particular direction of "pool as folklore") will soon enough be turned away from this site after reading just a nominal amount of textual content.
The fact remains, that looking at anything from any new and strange perspective is almost always challenging, at first, or even for a while, for any human being.
And so, we must eventually accept...
Life is greatly about change and adaptation,
or you may as well accept all that painful stagnation, of age;
and eternal limitations on your range,
as your outward movement is slowly lost to you.
To be expansive and accepting is to own a timeless youth.
So, be strong in everything you do,
and kind in everything you think,
and challenges will dissipate before you, most perfectly.
More Historically... And According to Wikipedia.com:
Also, please visit the above site for a more detailed history of folklore.The academic and usually ethnographic study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics. The word 'folklore' was first used by the English antiquarian William Thoms in a letter published by the London Journal Athenaeum in 1846. In usage, there is a continuum between folklore and mythology. Stith Thompson made a major attempt to index the motifs of both folklore and mythology, providing at outline into which new motifs can be placed, and scholars can keep track of all older motifs. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folklore)
Nowadays, Folklore is...
an academic discipline which has by far transcended any of the working boundaries and definitions of its past. Due to its current and ever more wide-reaching scope, folklore can certainly be an intensely interesting and stimulating philosophy to follow. For one, folklore is just so deeply intertwined with so many other academic disciplines, including Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology, Linguistics, English, Literature, Fine Arts, Dance, Music (perhaps all of the Social Sciences and Humanities) that one would be hard pressed not to be impressed by it. In fact, the class that this web project was completed for, "American Folklore," was actually an English class. However, being in this class and studying folklore was more like dipping one's toes into "a pool of all disciplines." Honestly, it seems that just about any person, holding an interest in just about anything, could greatly expand their world view just by looking at things from a folkloric perspective. Due to folklore's rich and complex perspective, I would even say that taking a folklore class would be a very nice way for an "undecided" college student, one whom has not solidified his/her goals yet, to start to get a better idea about what he/she would like to major in. What is more, though I am not yet sure about what is entailed in receiving a Bachelor's Degree in folklore, I do find myself intrigued by investigations that possibility now.
