[BEVERLY J. STOELTJE]Myth: Folklore Process in a Modern Nation
Making the Frontier
Myth: Folklore Process in a Modern Nation
BEVERLY J. STOELTJE
The more these [cherished] values are threatened, the more vigorously
will the myth be defended.
Mody Boatright
Questions of belief, legend, and myth represent a longstanding concern to folklorists, and yet the field of folkore studies has been reluctant to address matters of belief and ideology in modern mass culture.Some of this reluctance can be understood when we review the discipline's orientation to the past in its early years. At its inception it concerned itself with survivals and antiquities and with the transmission of folk materials from an original pure form in the misty past to a diluted or contaminated variant in the present.
