The academic study of folklore, including the methods, theories, and approaches used to analyze traditional cultural expressions.
Folkloristics is the scholarly discipline devoted to the study of folklore in all its forms. It emerged as a distinct field in the 19th century with the work of the Grimm Brothers, who pioneered the systematic collection and analysis of folk narratives. Key theoretical approaches include: the historic-geographic method (tracking tale variants across time and space), structuralism (Propp's morphological analysis), psychoanalytic approaches (Bettelheim's Freudian interpretations), performance theory (focusing on the act of storytelling), and feminist folktale analysis. Major organizations include the American Folklore Society (founded 1888) and the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. Modern folkloristics also encompasses digital folklore, urban legends, and internet memes.
The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index is a catalog of international folktale types used by folklorists to identify and compare story patterns across cultures.
Vladimir Propp's structural analysis of Russian fairy tales identifying 31 narrative functions that appear in a fixed sequence.
The traditional beliefs, customs, stories, songs, and practices of a community, passed through generations by word of mouth.