The Golem and the Wondrous Deeds of the Maharal of Prague. Review

Yudl Rosenberg’s 1909 version of the traditional Jewish folktale of the Golem transformed this story forever. The Golem is a man made by rabbis from clay and given life, usually by means of Kabbalistic practice. Rosenberg’s book became an immediate bestseller and was immensely influential. It masqueraded as an original account of sixteenth-century events, divided into self-contained stories, which centred on the “Maharal,” the maker of the Golem. “The Maharal of Prague” is another name for Rabbi Judah Loew Ben Bezalel (1525–1609). Rosenberg’s book ensured that he was best known for his fictitious role in the Golem legends, but his reputation as an important thinker of the post-Medieval period is growing. Loew developed an entirely new approach to the aggadah of the Talmud. He was also a progressive educationalist and an enlightened student of science. Far from being a practitioner of the secret arts, his reputation for mysticism rests on his translation of Kabbalistic ideas into clearly accessible terminology. In Rosenberg’s stories this historical personage is transformed into a protector of the Jewish people, whose knowledge of Kabbalah gives him superhuman powers.

An important reason for the success of Rosenberg’s book was a very strong interest in the occult, widely shared by his contemporaries, both Jewish and non-Jewish. This partly explains why this version of the ancient Golem tale transcended a Jewish audience and became widely known. The importance and influence of Rosenberg’s version is beyond dispute, which means that Curt Leviant’s translation performs a vital role in making this book available to a broader audience.

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Cinderella in America: A Book of Folk and Fairy Tales. Book review

The title of this superbly edited book is misleading and yet accurate. At first glance, one might think that the book would be about the different versions of the tale “Cinderella” in America. This is not at all the case. Yet the title is apt, for the book is truly about a neglected and mistreated “Cinderella genre,” the wonder fairytale in America, in all its diverse oral and literary forms, and about how scholars and educated readers have tended to believe that the European tale types never took root in the early days of the founding of America. Some have even asserted that there is no such thing as an American fairytale.

McCarthy’s purpose is to prove them wrong. His goal, he states, is “to demonstrate the scope of the Old World repertoire as it settled into U.S. American culture, changing, developing, and acclimating inmuch the same way the tales of this repertoire have always settled and acclimated, wherever they have found themselves”(p. 8). Not only does he fulfil his goal, but he does it convincingly and with great erudition, thoroughness, and originality, and with a stunning collection of approximately two hundred tales from the eighteenth century to the present.

McCarthy’s anthology is divided into six parts and eighteen chapters and a helpful appendix about studying American folktales. The repertoire of the tales is generally Indo-European, and he provides the Aarne-Thompson-Uther tale-type index for those readers who want to compare the tales with similar ones in other cultures. The organisation of the chapters is based on geography and the particular connection that a region may have had to another European country. For instance, the headings of the parts read: (I) The Early Record; (II) The Iberian Folktale in the United States; (III) French Tradition in the Old Louisiana Territory; (IV) The British Tradition of the South; (V) Other People, Other Tales—which includes German traditions in Pennsylvania, Irish-American tales, tales from other communities, and European tales in Native American traditions; and (VI) A Case Study—which includes photographs of Betty Carriveau telling one of her father’s French-Canadian tales entitled “Angel Gabriel.”

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Film, Folklore, and Urban Legends. Review

Film, Folklore and Urban Legends consists of slightly reworked essays previously published by Mikel Koven between 1995 and 2007, collected with the hope, he says, of drawing “a line underneath these preliminary explorations,” and so that “future scholarship will develop” the ideas contained in the collection. The book is divided into five sections: part one is a partial survey of scholarship concerning film and folklore, part two consists of three methodological studies (of The Wicker Man and Frazer’s Golden Bough, and of the use or misuse of tale-type and motif indices in understanding some horror films and some film comedies), part three is concerned with exploring the feedback-loop of certain legendary beliefs created by their depiction on television and in the movies, part four discusses various aspects of urban legends and their depiction, and part five presents an essay on “ostension,” the enactment of legend in film and on “reality” television.

As a whole, this group of essays provides a useful entry point to many important theories, practices and arguments about folklore and visual narrative, not least because it is in the form of essays aimed at specific questions rather than aiming to serve directly as a primer. The citations and bibliography alone are a valuable resource for anyone wishing to take up the subject. The down side of any such published collection, though, is that while ideas and methods may recur, there is no consistent argument sustained throughout. Everything has the defects of its virtues. Some consistent themes, do, however, hold many of these essays together conceptually: first, the position that mere “motif-spotting” is a pretty sterile enterprise; second, the question of the extent to which popular films participate in the production and dissemination of folklore; and third, an examination of the usefulness, or lack thereof, of applying the methods of folklore to the study of film.

Chapter one is a quick review of many different ways of applying folklore to films and a justification of studying film from a folkloric perspective on the grounds that film is the dominant modern mode of dissemination and propagation of narrative. Chapter two takes on the much-discussed (and much reviled) film, The Wicker Man (1973, directed by Robin Hardy) pointing out the irony that, while entirely reworking its sources, the film itself became a source for modern neo-pagan ritual. Koven here also raises the issue of ostension, which becomes the major subject of his penultimate essay in this volume.

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Greek and Roman Folklore. Book review

This series of folklore handbooks is outstanding for the expertise displayed, which is not surprising, when one considers that each writer is a recognised authority in his or her field, and skilled in conveying a wealth of information in a clear, lively, and modern manner. They follow the same pattern, the major sections being: definitions and classifications of various genres; examples and texts; the history of folklore collecting, scholarship and interpretation in the area concerned; and contexts, including the use of folklore material in literature, song, film, etc. This enables the authors to alternate their approach between the general and the particular, in some chapters offering guidance on various broad issues which could apply to many cultures besides the one under discussion, and in others illustrating the necessarily brief treatment of individual topics by a selection of well-chosen illustrative texts. Needless to say, the chapter notes and bibliographies give ample guidance to further reading.

Space does not permit a detailed review of the contents of each book, but I can warmly commend them not only as guides to the traditions of these particular regions, but as excellent models of modern folklore scholarship.

Op Verhaal Komen. Moderne Sagen en Geruchten uit Vlaanderen

With his most recent book, Stefaan Top has published an impressive collection of modern legends and rumours that were collected among Flemish youngsters. This book is the sixth and last part of the author’s legend collection Op Verhaal Komen. The previous five parts dealt with traditional legends recorded in the five Flemish provinces.

Top enthusiastically reassures the reader that storytelling is still alive today. Just like their traditional counterparts, modern legends voice the fears, frustrations, and obsessions of their narrators. What distinguishes modern legends from traditional ones is primarily their contemporary setting and modern themes. The author pays attention to classical problems such as terminology and definitions associated with modern legends. Regarding terminology, Top presents an elaborate inventory of nineteen Dutch names for modern legends, forty English, eleven German, and four French ones. He also discusses the content, presentation, sources, and circulation of these legends.

Whereas the roots of collecting and recording traditional folk narratives lie in Europe, the first scientific studies of contemporary legends come from the United States of the 1940s and 1950s. Later on, Europe caught up, which the author shows by a non-exhaustive overview of publications on this subject. In 1982 Top attended the first international contemporary legend conference in Sheffield. Since then he has pursued this fascinating subject in his educational activities at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. This book presents the striking results of fieldwork during which university students questioned hundreds of pupils in youth groups and secondary schools about their knowledge of modern legends. In his foreword to this book, the Minister of Youth and Culture praises the author’s ability to render the oral discourse of adolescents with great precision.

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