Overview

This broad-based collection of essays is an introduction both to the concerns of contemporary folklore scholarship and to the variety of forms that folk performance has taken throughout English history. Combining case studies of specific folk practices with discussion of the various different lenses through which they have been viewed since becoming the subject of concerted study in Victorian times, this book builds on the latest work in an ever-growing body of contemporary folklore scholarship. Many of the contributing scholars are also practicing performers and bring experience and understanding of performance to their analyses and critiques. Chapters range across the spectrum of folk song, music, drama and dance, but maintain a focus on the key defining characteristics of folk performance – custom and tradition – in a full range of performances, from carol singing and sword dancing to playground rhymes and mummers' plays. As well as being an essential reference for folklorists and scholars of traditional performance and local history, this is a valuable resource for readers in all disciplines of dance, drama, song and music whose work coincides with English folk traditions.

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9781032021966

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Reviews

This is a rich and stimulating collection that deserves to be read and thought about widely, one fruitfully triggering questions and discussions that will play out across all future studies in these areas. - Folk Music Journal The editors have curated a pioneering collection of essays that brings together acknowledged experts in traditional drama, dance, music, song, custom and children's lore. Tracing practices right through history from late medieval times up to revivals of the present day, they offer both a survey of and a rationale for folk performance. While modern revivals are frequently marked by the performers' own interventions, the essays here reveal that has always been the practice and 'authenticity' is an elusive chimera. This volume marks a turning point in our understanding of the 'folk arts'. - David Atkinson, Editor of the Folk Music Journal This exemplary anthology of contemporary research on folk performing arts in England addresses a long felt need for a text that updates, informs, questions and inspires. Bringing together veteran and new scholars across various hues of history, performance studies and ethnography, this unique collection presents fresh and well-grounded insights into cultural labels and practices of folk drama, theatre, dance, song and music. Carefully framed to stimulate critical inquiry, the editors' vision and commentaries, in tandem with the wealth of specially commissioned chapters, represent a turning point in folk performance publication. In short, there really is nothing else like this book available. - Professor Theresa Buckland, Editorial Consultant, Dance Research The work presents a penetrating collection of articles by 26 contributors that analyse the folk performing arts of drama, dance, song and music. In doing so, it promotes a profound vision of these related, interdependent and overlapping performing genres. The editors are to be complemented on the vision of the work and their astute selection and organisation of it. The collection is bound to become a standard work in its field and a necessary 'go to' book for both its information and sharp analysis. - Philip Butterworth, theatre historian, Visiting Scholar, School of History, University of Leeds, UK

Author Information

Peter Harrop is Professor Emeritus of Drama at the University of Chester, formerly Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor. His 2019 monograph Mummers’ Plays Revisited is published by Routledge as part of their series Advances in Theatre and Performance. In 2013 he edited Performance Ethnography: Dance, Drama, Music (with Dunja Njaradi). Steve Roud is a freelance writer, researcher and consultant, formerly Head of Local Studies Library and Archives, London Borough of Croydon and the Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society. His most recent works include the widely reviewed and critically acclaimed Folk Song in England (2017) as well as The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs (2012) (with Julia Bishop).

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