​"Foster’s introduction, ‘The Challenge of the Folkloresque’, is undoubtedly going to be one of the most read essays in contemporary folklore studies in the near future."
—Folkore

“I can envision The Folkloresque functioning as a manifesto that enables folklorists to join conversations about contemporary culture that we should have been a part of right along...At stake, perhaps, is nothing less than the revitalization and reintegration of an increasingly marginalized discipline.”
—Russell Frank, Pennsylvania State University

"This book will be important to those who study folklore and those studying the underpinnings and creations of popular culture...Expanding the discipline to include the folkloresque is a positive move within the contemporary and rapidly expanding technological framework in which folklore now is recurrently manifested."
—Western Folklore

This volume introduces a new concept to explore the dynamic relationship between folklore and popular culture: the “folkloresque.” With “folkloresque,” Foster and Tolbert name the product created when popular culture appropriates or reinvents folkloric themes, characters, and images. Such manufactured tropes are traditionally considered outside the purview of academic folklore study, but the folkloresque offers a frame for understanding them that is grounded in the discourse and theory of the discipline.

Fantasy fiction, comic books, anime, video games, literature, professional storytelling and comedy, and even popular science writing all commonly incorporate elements from tradition or draw on basic folklore genres to inform their structure. Through three primary modes—integration, portrayal, and parody—the collection offers a set of heuristic tools for analysis of how folklore is increasingly used in these commercial and mass-market contexts.

The Folkloresque challenges disciplinary and genre boundaries; suggests productive new approaches for interpreting folklore, popular culture, literature, film, and contemporary media; and encourages a rethinking of traditional works and older interpretive paradigms.

Contributors: Trevor J. Blank, Chad Buterbaugh, Bill Ellis, Timothy H. Evans, Michael Dylan Foster, Carlea Holl-Jensen, Greg Kelley, Paul Manning, Daniel Peretti, Gregory Schrempp, Jeffrey A. Tolbert

MICHAEL DYLAN FOSTER
Michael Dylan Foster is associate professor of folklore and East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University. He is the author of Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai, The Book of Yokai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore, and numerous articles on folklore, literature, and media.

JEFFREY A. TOLBERT
Jeffrey A. Tolbert is assistant professor of American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg. His research focuses on supernatural belief, and his dissertation examines belief and the landscape in contemporary Ireland. His broader research interests include folklore and popular culture, especially video games, and supernatural traditions in new/digital media, such as the Slender Man Internet phenomenon.