Richard Mercer Dorson (March 12, 1916 – September 11, 1981) was an American

folklorist Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

, professor, and director of the

Folklore Institute Folklore Institute refers to the folklore studies program of Indiana University Bloomington (USA). The Folklore Institute, together with the Ethnomusicology Institute, constitute the larger Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. The Departmen ...

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

. Dorson has been called the "father of

American folklore American folklore encompasses the folklore that has evolved in the present-day United States mostly since the European colonization of the Americas. It also contains folklore that dates back to the Pre-Columbian era, Pre-Columbian era. Folklor ...

"Nichols, Amber M.
Richard M. Dorson
. ''Minnesota State University, Mankato eMuseum''. URL accessed April 21, 2006 and "the dominant force in the study of folklore".Michigan State University
Michigan Heritage Awards 2003
. ''Michigan Traditional Arts Program''. URL accessed January 19, 2019.

Career

Dorson was born in New York City into a wealthy

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family. He studied at the

Phillips Exeter Academy Phillips Exeter Academy (often called Exeter or PEA) is an Independent school, independent, co-educational, college-preparatory school in Exeter, New Hampshire. Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school and educates an es ...

from 1929 to 1933.Guide to the Richard Dorson papers in the Lilly Library
''Indiana University''. URL accessed April 22, 2006. He then went on to

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

where he earned his A.B., M.A., in history, and his Ph.D. degree in the History of American Civilization in 1942. He began teaching as an instructor of history at Harvard in 1943. He moved to

Michigan State University Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...

in 1944 staying there until 1957 when he took a position at

as professor of history and folklore as well as that of chairman of the Committee on Folklore. He taught at Indiana until his death. He brought the eminent folklorist

Linda Dégh Linda Dégh (18 March 1918 – 19 August 2014) was a folklorist and professor of Folklore & Ethnomusicology at Indiana University, USA. Dégh was born in Budapest, Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning muc ...

to Bloomington, who revolutionized American folklore research. He was the general editor of the "Folktales of the World" (1963–1973), a multivolume series published by the University of Chicago Press. He served an advisory editor of the series "International Folklore" (48 vols., 1977), as well as the series editor of "Folklore of the World" (38 vols., 1980). In addition, he contributed articles to numerous scholarly and popular periodicals. From 1957 to 1962 he edited the

Journal of Folklore Research The ''Journal of Folklore Research: An International Journal of Folklore and Ethnomusicology'' is a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on folklore, folklife, and ethnomusicology. It was established in 1942 and is published ...

. He was elected president of the

American Folklore Society The American Folklore Society (AFS) is the United States (US)-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world, which aims to encourage research, aid in disseminating that research, promote t ...

, 1966 to 1968. In addition, he was the founder and editor of the journal of the Folklore Institute (1963–1981) at Indiana. Dorson's study of American folklore involved several roles; "

polemicist Polemic ( , ) is contentious rhetoric intended to support a specific position by forthright claims and to undermine the opposing position. The practice of such argumentation is called polemics, which are seen in arguments on controversial to ...

critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as Art criticism, art, Literary criticism, literature, Music journalism, music, Film criticism, cinema, Theater criticism, theater, Fas ...

, field collector, library scholar".Dorson, p. vii Dorson also wrote that "no subject of study in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

today

976 Year 976 ( CMLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * January 10 – Emperor John I Tzimiskes dies at Constantinople, after returning from a second campaign against ...

is more misunderstood than folklore".Dorson, p. 1

Contributions to folklore

Dorson contributed two terms to the study of folklore that have gained common currency. The first is "

urban legend Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not. These legends can be e ...

"; meaning a modern "story which never happened told for true".Straight Dope Science Advisory Board
What's so urban about urban legends?
''Straight Dope''. URL accessed April 21, 2006. Dorson also coined the word "

fakelore Invented traditions are cultural practices that are presented or perceived as traditional, arising from people starting in the distant past, but which are relatively recent and often consciously invented by historical actors. The concept was high ...

" in a debate with author James Stevens.Dorson, p. 5 Dorson dismissed Stevens' book on

Paul Bunyan Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack and folk hero in American and Canadian folklore. His tall tales revolve around his superhuman labors, and he is customarily accompanied by Babe the Blue Ox, his pet and working animal. The character originate ...

, and the later work of

Ben Botkin Benjamin Albert Botkin (February 7, 1901 – July 30, 1975) was an American folklorist and scholar. Early life Botkin was born on February 7, 1901, in East Boston, Massachusetts, to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. He attended the English High Schoo ...

as fakelore, or "a synthetic product claiming to be authentic oral tradition but actually tailored for mass edification", which "misled and gulled the public". Dorson's fieldwork touched upon

African-American folklore African-American folktales refer to the storytelling and oral history practices of enslaved African Americans from the 1700s through the 1900s. Common themes in African-American folktales include tricksters, life lessons, heartwarming tales, an ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

, folklore of the

Upper Peninsula The Upper Peninsula of Michigan—also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. or Yoop—is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula b ...

, other regional folklore in the United States, the

folklore of Japan Japanese folklore encompasses the informally learned folk traditions of Japan and the Japanese people as expressed in its oral traditions, customs, and material culture. In Japanese, the term is used to describe folklore. The academic study of ...

, and other topics. Among other academic recognitions, Dorson was awarded the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

award in History of American Civilization in 1946, and three

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

s (1949, 1964, and 1971). In 2003, the Michigan Traditional Arts Program of the

Michigan State University Museum The Michigan State University Museum most commonly referred to as the ''MSU Museum'' is Michigan State University's oldest museum formed in 1857. It is the state of Michigan's first Smithsonian Affiliate. It was formed to support the work of the ...

awarded him the Michigan Heritage Award posthumously for his Michigan-based fieldwork contributions. According to Anne Keene, at Indiana: :Dorson gained international recognition as the dean of American folklife studies and was credited with transforming folklore from a field of tangential interest to a scholarly discipline in its own right. He was an intense and prodigious researcher and writer with seemingly boundless energy, devoted to the study of what he termed “the underculture, in contrast with the elite, the uppercrust, the official, the formal culture.” Dorson viewed himself, first and foremost, as a historian, and he was suspicious of attempts by other disciplines—anthropology, sociology, and psychology, among others—to co-opt folk culture for their own theoretical purposes. Folklore, he argued, was firmly rooted in human history and should be studied empirically as a means of expanding knowledge of that history; to that end, he repeatedly emphasized the necessity for the accurate collection and documentation of folk materials. At a time when quasi-legendary American folk heroes like Davy Crockett and Paul Bunyan were increasingly being popularized and commercialized by the mass media, Dorson placed himself squarely in opposition to what he termed “fakelore,” what might be called the Disneyfication of folk traditions; he dismissed anything he suspected of being less than genuine. That attitude extended to the so-called folk-music revival of the mid-twentieth century—to the mock dismay of many of his guitar-picking students. According to William Wilson: :Dorson, in much the same manner as European romantic-nationalistic folklorists, set himself the patriotic task of discovering and making known the genius of his country's national spirit. Throughout his research career, Dorson moved freely across space and time--from the United States and England to Africa and Japan, from the religious narratives of the Puritans to the urban legends of college students, from international folktales of the world to the personal experience narratives of Indiana steelworkers. But from his early writings on Davy Crockett and Brother Jonathan to his final book on fabulous men and beasts in American comic legends, the work which clearly seemed closest to his heart was the romantic-nationalistic attempt to discover in American folklore those traits and sentiments that are peculiarly and uniquely American.William A. Wilson, "Richard M. Dorson as Romantic-Nationalist." ''Journal of Folklore Research'' (1989) p. 35.

Bibliography

Dorson's papers are held at the Lilly Library of Indiana University. Audio recordings from his fieldwork can be found at the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University. In addition to his several books, Dorson also edited the ''Folktales of the World'' series, published between 1963 and 1979 by the University of Chicago Press. *1939: ''Davy Crocket, American Comic Legend'' *1946: ''Jonathan Draws the Long Bow'' *1950: ''America Begins'' *1952: ''Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers'' (reprinted by the

University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press (sometimes abbreviated as UW Press) is a Non-profit organization, non-profit university press publishing Peer review, peer-reviewed books and journals. It publishes work by scholars from the global academic comm ...

in 2008) *1953: ''American Rebels: Personal narratives of the American Revolution'' *1956: ''Negro Folktales in Michigan'' *1958: ''Negro Folktales from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Calvin, Michigan'' *1959: ''American Folklore'' *1961: ''American Folklore and the Historian'' *1961: ''Folk Legends of Japan'' *1961: ''Folklore Research Around the World: A North American Point of View'' *1964: ''Buying the Wind: Regional Folklore in the United States'' *1967: ''American Negro Folktales'' *1968: ''Peasant Customs and Savage Myths: Selections from the British Folklorists'' *1969: ''British Folklorists: A History'' *1971: ''American Folklore and the Historian'' *1972: ''African Folklore'' *1972: ''Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction'' *1973: ''America in Legend'' *1973: ''Folklore and Traditional History'' *1974: ''Folklore in the Modern World'' *1976: ''Folklore and Fakelore: Essays toward a Discipline of Folk Studies'' *1981: ''Land of the Millrats'' *1983
''Handbook of American Folklore''

Career

Contributions to folklore

Bibliography

Notes

Further reading