SOURCE: "Toward the Establishment of Principles for the Study of Folklore and Literature," in Southern Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 43, Nos. 1 & 2, 1979, pp. 5-16.

In the following excerpt, Barnes takes issue with prevailing attitudes in folklore criticism.

In their more melancholic moments, academics are often inclined to admit that the pursuit of scholarship is at best a kind of game. Such a pursuit does (to invoke the textbook definition of a true game) involve "the element of competition, the possibility of winning or losing [one's academic future is often literally at stake], and a measure of organization with some kind of controlling rules."¹ When judged even by such minimally demanding criteria as these, however, the formal study of folklore in its relation to literature seems, with few and notable exceptions, never to have developed beyond the level of pastime (defined, we recall, in an appropriately circular fashion as "a traditional recreation...