Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition

Folk Nation: Folklore in the Creation of American Tradition. Edited by Simon J. Bronner. American Visions Series No. 6. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2002. 283 pp. $19.95 (pbk). ISBN 0-8420-2892-7

Now this is useful! Here is a text with a seventy-page introductory essay on the origin of the American tradition and seventeen articles documenting how Americans used folklore to shape different aspects of their national identity. This is not just for folklorists. It is a socio-politico-psycho-economic history of how the American tradition developed during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Graphic but readable, the articles chronicle how American thinkers and leaders tactically defined America in terms of its legends, rituals and beliefs. They used Davy Crockett and Pecos Bill, and cowboys and immigrants, and, yes, even quilts as symbols. As Bronner describes it, "Disputes raged throughout the [period] over how traditions characterizing...