<p> Cajun and Creole traditional music evolves, as does any living tradition. Taking this music into consideration from the perspective of &laquo; oral poetry, &raquo; a concept defined by Ruth Finnegan and Paul Zumthor, this thesis studies the aspect of singing in Cajun and Creole traditional music through transformations affected by recording technology (Zumthor&rsquo;s notion of &laquo; mediatized orality &raquo;) with respect to the actual sociolinguistic context in Louisiana. First, we study the transformations occuring in songs from the traditional repertoire, through various audio renderings of the same songs. Second, we look at the way new songs, created in the traditional frame, address the lyrical content through old and contemporary themes, including the use of French language and bilingualism. This discussion is informed by interviews conducted with targeted musicians concerning their linguistic perceptions and respective artistic approaches. Thus, we eventually discover how, in addition to being a dance genre, Cajun and Creole music plays an essential role in the continued existence of French language in Louisiana.</p>

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<p> St. Patrick's Irish Picnic and Homecoming is a barbecue event held every July in the small town of McEwen, Tennessee, located just west of Nashville. Each year, volunteers for the event barbecue 20,000 pounds of pork shoulder and 4,000 chicken halves. With its massive size, the event is the primary fundraiser for St. Patrick's Church and School, and as such holds great importance within the community. A <i>Tennessee Irish Picnic</i> examines the history, culture, and folklore of the event, analyzing it as it fits within the larger context of barbecue in the American South. Utilizing archival research and interviews with event volunteers and St. Patrick's parishioners, the author's ethnographic approach reveals many similarities between the event and the overarching cultural narrative of barbecue. In other ways, however, the event stands in alternative to these interpretations. Although cultural depictions of barbecue portray the foodway as a marginalizing experience between north and south, female and male, white and black, primitive and civilized, an investigation of the narrative on a smaller scale reveals the complexities of the foodway as a mark of community history and group and personal identities. The event becomes important not only on a financial level, but also in terms of understanding community dynamics.</p>

<p> Cinderella stories are one of the most popular fairy tales in the world. At the same time, they are most stigmatized by people for describing a weak and passive female protagonist. To discover possible explanations for this continuing popularity of Cinderella stories, I chose to analyze the Kongjwi Patjwi story, one of the Cinderella tales in Korea. The Kongjwi Patjwi story is one of the well-known folktales in Korea that has been adapted for children since the beginning of the 20th century. Since the Kongjwi Patjwi story is not familiar to many western people, I first analyze two of the folklore versions of Kongjwi Patjwi to prove that this story is also one kind of Cinderella tale. Both of them have the "innocent, persecuted heroine" theme, which is one of the most distinctive features of Cinderella tales. In one version, the plot follows almost exactly the same trajectory as European Cinderella tales in that it has the lost shoe motif and marriage with the Prince. The biggest difference between the Korean Cinderella and other Cinderella stories is that there is another plot in the Korean Cinderella story as the passive protagonist matures and becomes an independent woman. In some of the adapted fairy tale versions for children, this plot does not appear and the Korean Cinderella becomes another passive girl who is rescued by her Prince Charming. One of the reasons for this change is that the mothers, the buyers of the children's books, want the "Prince Charming's rescue" plot because they find that it is hard to become an independent woman in Korean society. To accommodate the consumers' wants and needs, publishers intentionally change the plots with passive protagonists. The folklore version of Kongjwi Patjwi actually suggests a more independent and mature female character which would be a good role model for many young boys and girls.</p>

<p> From Madame Le Prince de Beaumont to Francesca Lia Block, Walter Crane to Mercer Mayer, and Jacques Cocteau to the Walt Disney Company, authors, artists, and filmmakers are drawn to recreating "Beauty and the Beast." As a result "Beauty and the Beast" is reformatted to reflect shifts in cultural assumptions, particularly ideas of gender roles, sexuality, and identifying the Other. Therefore, by examining the recurring motifs of the feminine ideal, the Beast as Other, and the transposition of the tale to an Orientalized setting, within adaptations of "Beauty and the Beast," it becomes clear that the tale is a multi-voiced tool with which authors and illustrators use to simultaneously support and subvert the hegemonic status quo. Examining the significance of "Beauty and the Beast" offers insight as to the power that revised texts have over their precursor texts and their producing culture. By understanding the importance of "Beauty and the Beast" as a symbiotic text, one can understand how it functions within its cultural context. Such an examination reveals that not only does culture dictate the tales we tell, but also that the tales we tell dictate our cultural identity. Ultimately this project concludes that this tale works within Western culture to convey shifting cultural messages about Otherness, women, and Islam.</p>

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The aim of the study is to move away from the antiquarian bias of previous work on the folklore of the supernatural in order to shed light on present day attitudes and concepts. In the past, folkiorists have done very little to collect their own culture, or even to recognise its forms. This has been particularly true of British work on ghost traciitions - the tendency of all but a very few scholars has 'been to retire to the library and compile collections of legends. The present study eschews this approach in favour of fieldwork. There are three main aspects of the work. The early chapters provide a resume of texts on the supernatural, from 1572 to the present day, seeking (i) to construct a cultural history of the concept of the ghost, and (ii) to evaluate the usefulness of these texts to the folklorist or historian of ideas. The central part of the thesis concentrates on presenting a picture of contemporary supernatural beliefs, drawing on data collected in informal interviews with 120 mainly elderly people resident in Gatley, a suburb of Manchester. Two central concepts are analysed - that is, ideas about ghosts, and about knowledge of the future. A third chapter describes miscellaneous beliefs (telepathy, UFOs, 'Luck', and mediumistic powers). In the later chapters attention is drawn to the manner of the storytelling through which these beliefs are expressed. The structure of inemorate is discussed. with particular reference to the Labovian model of personal experience stories. Finally the performative style of the storyteller is analysed in detail to show the basic linguistic resources a storyteller may call upon when structuring private experience into public narrative.

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