Ян Гарольд Брунванд: Жизнь и творчество фольклориста

American folklorist (born 1933)

Jan Harold Brunvand (born March 23, 1933) is an American retired folklorist, researcher, writer, public speaker, and professor emeritus of English at the University of Utah. Brunvand is best known for popularizing the concept of the urban legend, a form of modern folklore or story telling. Urban legends are "too good to be true" stories "Urban legends," Brunvand says, "have a persistent hold on the imagination because they have an element of suspense or humor, they are plausible and they have a moral."

Brunvand was born on March 23, 1933, in Cadillac, Michigan, to Norwegian immigrants He and his two siblings, Tor and Richard, Brunvand graduated from J. W. Sexton High School in Lansing in 1951. From high school, Brunvand attended Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, where, in 1955, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism. He started publishing in academic publications during this period, notably a paper on Norwegian American folklore in the archives of Indiana University and one about the Norwegian folk hero Askeladden. In 1957, Brunvand returned to the United States as a graduate student at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. During this time, he met Archer Taylor, who, as a visiting professor, taught a course on proverbs and riddles. This course, according to Brunvand, "changed his life." Proverbs became one of Brunvand's favorite topics to study and discuss. highlighted his interest in the structure, morphology and typology of the folktale. Brunvand taught at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, from 1961 to 1965. before moving with his wife and four children to the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, where he remained a professor until his retirement in 1996. He had also served as Book Review Editor for the Journal of American Folklore, He also won a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Humanities (Folklore and Popular Culture) that same year. Throughout the next decade, Brunvand focused his research on Romanian folklore, with a particular interest in Romanian house decoration. He returned to Romania in 1973 74 and again in 1981, receiving grants from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) to continue his studies. Brunvand received an Honorable Mention for this book in a 1969 Chicago Folklore Prize competition. The Chicago Folklore Prize is "supported by an endowment established by the International Folklore Association and is awarded annually by the University of Chicago for an important contribution to the study of folklore." Brunvand's A Guide for Collectors of Folklore in Utah was published by Utah Publications in the American West in 1971. In the years 1973 to 1976, Brunvand, again, took on the role of associate editor for the Journal of American Folklore. The book, intended for undergraduate folklore students, was a research tool with a bibliographic guide and tips for researching term papers. published by W. W. Norton and Company in 1979, American Folklore: An Encyclopedia, published by Garland in 1996.

While teaching folklore at the University of Utah, Brunvand noticed a disconnect with his students and their views toward folklore. "They always seemed to think that folklore belonged to somebody else, usually in the past, that was something quaint and outdated." He began asking his students to think about and discuss stories from their own lives. These stories helped form the basis of a collection which Brunvand later included in several popular books on the topic of urban legends. helped to popularize the topic for a student audience. Urban legends, Brunvand explains, are "kissing cousins of myths, fairy tales and rumors. Legends differ from rumors because the legends are stories, with a plot. And unlike myths and fairy tales, they are supposed to be current and true, events rooted in everyday reality that at least could happen." but are "weird whoppers we tell one another, believing them to be factual." The Big Book of Urban Legends (which was formatted as a comic book), The Mexican Pet: More "New" Urban Legends, Curses! Broiled Again!, The Baby Train: And Other Lusty Urban Legends, Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends, and The Truth Never Stands in the Way of a Good Story!. He made several appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and, in 1987, began a twice weekly syndicated newspaper column called Urban Legends. the title was later added to book jackets and other publicity. A Harvard Lampoon publication, Mediagate, parodied urban legend books with this fake publisher's notice: "Bookman Publishing's Catalog for Fall '87: The Embarrassing Fart and More New Urban Legends by Jan Harold Brunvand. Yet another set of rumors, tall tales, and fourth hand hearsay compiled by the author of The Vanishing Hitchhiker. Includes more recent urban legends such as the Senile President, the Adulterous Evangelist, and the Smelly Gym Sock in the Big Mac. 233 pages hardbound. $34.95 (Harvard 1988: 229)."

Brunvand retired from the University of Utah in 1996, but continued doing some research and writing as professor emeritus of English. Once in a while, Brunvand's hobbies and academic interests intersect, notably with an article in The American Fly Fisher debunking a fake quotation by Thoreau. He writes a series of columns on Seniors Skiing. com. Brunvand was a guest on National Public Radio's All Things Considered in September 1999. He spoke to Noah Adams about his book Too Good to be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends. His Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, illustrated by Randy Hickman, was published by ABC CLIO in 2001. He gave the keynote address at the 2003 meeting of the Missouri Folklore Society. He was a speaker at the World Skeptics Congress in Italy in 2004. Brunvand's book Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends was published in 2004 by W. W. Norton and Company. He participated in the Solo Angler category. Included in the book are such chilling and humorous stories "The Solid Cement Cadillac," As with Heard About the Solid Cement Cadillac or the Nude in the Camper?, Brunvand categorizes the different legends included in The Vanishing Hitchhiker into classic urban legend types. Like in his book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Brunvand provided the reader with a survey of urban legends, stories such as "The Choking Doberman," "The Poison Dress," and "The Death of Little Mikey." Though Robert D. Bethke called The Choking Doberman "the kind of work one immediately wants to share with friends," "Cabbage Patch Kids' death certificates," To some, like reviewer Elliott Oring, the classification system used by Brunvand made The Study of American Folklore more of an "index" of American folklore rather than a "study" of it. Reviewer Kenneth Laine Ketner criticized the book for its failure to make explicit the background theory used to evaluate the works and classification system included in the book, contradictions in detail and narrative, its authoritarian tone, and its charismatic or arbitrary approach to knowledge with serious ethnocentric biases. Peter Tokofsky, in his article Introducing Folklore: A Review Essay, suggested that "the longevity and, presumably, continuing strong sales of the Brunvand text seems to confirm that introducing folklore by way of genres remains an effective and, for many, a preferred teaching tool even if it does not reflect the most current theoretical perspectives."

American Folklore: An Encyclopedia is an illustrated volume that contains within its pages more than 500 articles covering American and Canadian folklore and folklife. Subject areas include holidays, festivals, rituals to crafts, music, dance and occupations. The book provides short bibliographies and cross references for further research.