Trend sweeping English Literature...'Folk Realism'

[Katie-Ellen]

Aha! Mine could fit there. I read The Loney, and for me it was an 'almost.' Great on atmosphere, I felt he sold the horror short by giving the baby a devilish aspect. Don't want to give too much away, but a normal baby would have made it truly horrific.

But folk realism need not mean horror. The reviewer here has coined it to mean a story that is contemporary, but the modern world sits on top of the numinous ancient, and it's still there, poking through.

One notes too, the publishing history, and that a small publisher went with it first, Tartarus, and then it went to an imprint of Hachette, John Murray.

Folk Realism

 

[ChrisLewando]

So what is folk realism?

Quote: "We argue that realism isn’t just an IR paradigm, but a belief system, whose relationship with other ideological systems in public opinion has rarely been fully examined. Operationalizing this disposition in ordinary citizens as “folk realism,” we investigate its relationship with a variety of personality traits, foreign policy orientations, and political knowledge."

Duh?

Personally, I think of folk realism as 'almost historical' such as The vikings saga or the Game of Thrones, as it had more a feel of a historical re-telling in places than fantasy, making use of various known folk imagery, such as Gengis Khan (who really did pour boiling silver into the mouth of a pretender to his crown). The horror aspect of the 'dead' army in G.O.T. I felt was pretty much a publishing ploy at the opening. I don't think even the author knew what he was going to do with it in the end, but it added a touch of interest at the opening to a series that might otherwise not have sold on the first few pages. Was it a publishing ploy? If so, I'm not knocking it. It's seems to be what you have to do to succeed.

On the other hand, horror (in the purely literary sense) has nothing to do with realism, quite the opposite. Most fairy tales and legends have an aspect of horror, but it's not some unidentifiable THING, it usually is a character - a bad one with a motive, or something that simply isn't human like Grendel the monster, and even his mother, the witch. In old fairy tales the horrific was usually underplayed, like the woodcutter chopping off the feet of the dancing girl in the Little Red Shoes. Or rolling the nasty Queen down a hill inside a barrel hammered all round with nails... These were bedtime tales when I was a child.... now these aspects have been removed from the present day publications, which is a contradiction in attitude, when you think of the violence that is 'normal' on TV. Now I'm waffling.

I saw the reviews of the Loney, but I have to say they didn't excite me enough to buy it. Everyone these days has to have a character with some kind of intense psychological or physical problem. Tourette's is pretty rare, but every other detective has it (exaggeration I know) and every family has to have a kid with ADHD or Aspergers/Alexithymia. When 30% of kids in a given school can claim some kind of mental disability these days, it seems that folk realism has to be thrown out with the normality tag (What's normal anyway?). Hand in the air, I did it, too. My previous YA novel, Mendip Moon, had a blind kid. But it turned out she was a seer. In the more recent one about rape, everyone was refreshingly 'normal' with lots of personal hangups and prejudices. I didn't need to give them all Tourette's.

So, is folk realism just us isolated folk of the computer age rediscovering our ancestral roots through fiction? Learning to make fire with sticks?
It's a bit cold for that... bring on the electricity.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

So what is it?

I read it as meaning 'a story that is contemporary, but the modern world sits on top of the numinous ancient, and it's still there, poking through.'

Folk of the computer age....could be. Digital dislocation,The fairy tales were exceedingly horrific, seriously sanitised.

Would I re-read The Loney? Probably not. But there was enough in it, I don't begrudge the reading.

He did say, for want of a better term. I think it's not about making fires with sticks, but about the way rocks stick up through vegetation, about where people belong, or feel they belong or don't belong.

A reassertion of the power of landscape, I think, and our sense of connection to it, landscapes both geomorphological and ancestral; the 'whisperings within.'

 

[ChrisLewando]

A reassertion of the power of landscape, I think, and our sense of connection to it, landscapes both geomorphological and ancestral; the 'whisperings within.'

Yeah, like this comment. My partner is an archaeology nut and we are both into landscape geomorphology and the reality of man's dis-communication with nature. I'm well into ancient folk ballads and tales. A lot of the old Irish tales, even the ogham script, is rooted in tree lore and mythology (As is my book Mendip Moon). On our small patch of land we have planted well over 100 native species. I just hope they won't be grubbed up when we die to make grass for two more cows. they need an acre a year, or thereabouts.

 

[Marc Joan]

Yeah, like this comment. My partner is an archaeology nut and we are both into landscape geomorphology and the reality of man's dis-communication with nature. I'm well into ancient folk ballads and tales. A lot of the old Irish tales, even the ogham script, is rooted in tree lore and mythology (As is my book Mendip Moon). On our small patch of land we have planted well over 100 native species. I just hope they won't be grubbed up when we die to make grass for two more cows. they need an acre a year, or thereabouts.

Fantastic! I love trees and plant them myself when opportunity arises and it makes sense to do so -- wish I had room to plant a hundred! Of those I have successfully planted, my favourite is a quince -- the twisted branches look beautiful, and the fruit smells gorgeous. A rare perfume in December.
Re Irish tales / tree lore -- any connection with druids, sacred groves, etc? They were very strong just across the water from you, in Anglesey, of course.

 

[Marc Joan]

Regarding Folk Realism -- isn't it just another name for something we've always had? Could Alan Garner's stories be described as folk realism?

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I think they could indeed. I think he is saying, it's nothing new, but there seems to be a resurgence. Market trends and all that.

Magical trees, so many, but the alder is one to beware of, apperently.

 

[Marc Joan]

Someone told me that somewhere high up in the Cairngorms there is an expanse of natural bonsai trees, knee-high pines dwarfed by wind and weather, like a Lilliputian forest. If they were sentient, I bet they'd all be Grumpy.

 

[ChrisLewando]

Regarding Folk Realism -- isn't it just another name for something we've always had? Could Alan Garner's stories be described as folk realism?

I loved Alan Garner, and Susan Cooper, dated though they might be. they are classics.

There is huge tree lore in the old books, dating from druid times, it's thought, carried by voice in Canti-fable, an old form of recalling tales by theme and poetry, but written in early mediaeval times by monks, who obviously cut out the naughty bits and made the saints feature large, but reading between the lines... the stories of Cuchulain and Deirdre are just a small part of the huge tapestry that makes up the early irish saga. And there are ancient laws about what trees you can cut, at what times, and what their magical properties are. The monk who wrote this stuff weren't all bad, even back then they were trying to presever the stories, which is stated in the margins of some of the copies - all of which are partial as so much was destroyed by the Vikings and by time. The book of Kells itself was stolen by Vikings, the jewels removed from its cover, and it was recovered by the monks (those who hadn't been slaughtered).

 

[ChrisLewando]

Someone told me that somewhere high up in the Cairngorms there is an expanse of natural bonsai trees, knee-high pines dwarfed by wind and weather, like a Lilliputian forest. If they were sentient, I bet they'd all be Grumpy.

there are some ancient oaks on dartmoor, thought to be a couple of thousand years old, but tiny and contorted. It's in the breed, not just the weather. And I'm fairly small too. And grumpy sometimes. And gradually getting contorted, too. But I don't think that's in the breed.

 

[Marc Joan]

there are some ancient oaks on dartmoor, thought to be a couple of thousand years old, but tiny and contorted. It's in the breed, not just the weather. And I'm fairly small too. And grumpy sometimes. And gradually getting contorted, too. But I don't think that's in the breed.

Ha. But I'm sure your roots go deep.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

The Cairngorms are famously spooky and unfriendly with it, whatever the weather. If it ain't the Lairig Ghru scaring the army yompers, it's the Grey Man, and if it ain't that, it's Pan galloping about up to mischief at Rothiemurchus. Why shouldn't the trees join in the fun?

 

[Amber]

This reminds me .... I'm going to go buy Red Shift right now.

 

[ChrisLewando]

Just looked up Red Shift. I read the first four (Weirdstone, Bbrisingamen, Owl, Elidore) and had no idea there were more. Should have looked him up before. I loved his books then, but I wonder how dated they will feel to me now? Sometimes it's hard to go back. Disappointing, even. I read Lord of the rings several times when I was a teenager, and tried to read it again when the films were due out, and found the writing stilted, old fashioned almost impossible to like. That is one problem, I guess, with becoming a writer, you are far more judgmental in your reading.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I got bored, recently re-reading The Weirdstone. Red Shift though, I'm not about to find fault with his writing, not worthy, and it definitely stays the course for grownups.

He says he is a v-e-r-y slow writer, but with him it's very much a case of less is more. The skill is in UN-writing as much as writing. Trying to make yourself disappear as if through a singularity, as it were.

 

[MaryA]

I've been thinking about this for a few days, so please excuse the length.

The term ‘folk realism’ is something of an oddity, isn’t it? Somewhere between folk horror and magical realism. I read an article a while back on the ‘folk horror’ classics of British cinema in the late 1960s and early 70s: Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (East Anglia during the civil war); Piers Haggard’s Blood on Satan's Claw; and of course Robin Hardy’s Wicker Man. But folk horror in films, like neo-pagan folk elements in music, seem better defined as genres than in fiction.

There are overlapping tropes and themes (yes to what you said about landscaoe @Katie-Ellen Hazeldine ) that interest me a great deal. I like the Neo-Romantic Nature writers like Robert Macfarlane and the psychogeography of Iain Sinclair, exploring modern Britain’s anxieties and eco-concerns against a background of older beliefs and ‘superstitions’, spectres and the demonic. A number of English novelists play with themes around the Green Man or ghostly objects and haunted places, the ‘strangeness’ of country life and unresolved memories of the Craft and witch hunts in outwardly conventional villages. I’m about to tackle Xan Brooks’ eerie The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times and her new piece for the Guardian looks at the changing and troubled countryside.

I don’t read much of the popular (often YA) neo-pagan fiction because it strikes me as superficial and too predictable, a stage-set of portals or ‘thinning places’, fluffy bunny magic, borrowed bits from The Mists of Avalon or some Wiccan handbook for teenagers. Not authentic or unsettling enough.

What surprises me is when I find a ‘folk’ motif smuggled into supposedly realist or romantic fiction. With an online reading group, I’m re-reading an old childhood favourite, Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle and I was startled at how much of the feyness and folk lore I’d forgotten. And behind Dodie Smith’s nostalgic recreation of 1920s-‘30s rural England there is another great pagan influence, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s blithe and insouciant witch Lolly Willows. And Warner was the niece of another pagan titan, Arthur Machen, who in turn was influenced by the weird tales of MR James. These are genealogies of ‘eerie’ writing that aren’t easily pegged or imitated.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Bought a book recently, by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris: The Lost Words.

Not fiction, but very much in the spirit of what's been described under this term; folk realism. Words culled from the Oxford Children's encyclopaedia? Why? To make way for new, more relevant words like 'broadband.'

Ehhh???? Why not simply add the new words? An encyclopaedia should be evolving, getting fatter all the time.

Words like newt, no longer worth their space in a supposedly gold standard encyclopaedia! They've gone digi-potty. Geek-freakery. It's got to be rocked back.

“There is a shocking, proven connection between the decline in natural play and the decline in children’s wellbeing,” the letter said. A heated debate in the national press ensued, both for and against the lost words, and the collaboration between Morris and Macfarlane was born....

The Lost Words...article

 

[Jimithyh]

'So what is folk realism?

'Quote: "We argue that realism isn’t just an IR paradigm, but a belief system, whose relationship with other ideological systems in public opinion has rarely been fully examined. Operationalizing this disposition in ordinary citizens as “folk realism,” we investigate its relationship with a variety of personality traits, foreign policy orientations, and political knowledge."'

Not so much 'Duh', as what the monkey-butting thesaurus-chomping heck does the writer mean? And if a declaration is unintelligible, regardless of wordiness, then it says, and explains, nothing. Someone please decipher "Operationalising this disposition..." Someone, please. English.


On a more relevant note, if one considers the ever decreasing circles of genre nit-picking... "Mythago Wood" by Robert Holdstock, published in 1984 is a perfect example of so-called "folk realism". Of course, Wikipedia labels it mythic fiction.

Nit-picking, I tell ya.

I'm now going to write a stainless-steel-with rubber-seal-plughole-techo-industrial-fantasy for young-at-heart-twelve-month-olds. With finger puppets. Try pigeon-holing that Waterstones!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Mythic fiction, yes, why not? Modern Mythic. We all seem to agree on what kind of story this is all about.

I don't know that book, 'Mythago Wood'...thanks for that tip, Jim

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I've just finished reading Swansong, by Kerry Andrew:

Swansong by Kerry Andrew

It's an assured debut novel from a talented creative artist. I'm not sure what category of fiction it would fit into, but it certainly taps into folklore. I have a feeling, that it will appear on my Favourite 12 Novels of 2018 list, as it's one of those stories that stays with you, long after you've finished reading it. Book groups would love it, as there's so much symbolism and dodgy behaviour (casual sex, drug use, deceit) to discuss.

It also has an eye-catching cover design:

 

[Quillwitch]

Aha! Mine could fit there. I read The Loney, and for me it was an 'almost.' Great on atmosphere, I felt he sold the horror short by giving the baby a devilish aspect. Don't want to give too much away, but a normal baby would have made it truly horrific.

But folk realism need not mean horror. The reviewer here has coined it to mean a story that is contemporary, but the modern world sits on top of the numinous ancient, and it's still there, poking through.

One notes too, the publishing history, and that a small publisher went with it first, Tartarus, and then it went to an imprint of Hachette, John Murray.

Folk Realism

View attachment 1973

This sounds like something I would want to read! Folk realism. Who knew there was a name for the kind of stuff I enjoy! Katie do you follow the folklore thursdays on twitter? I love reading those! SOme time ago I read a children´s book called Albion´s Dream, and I loved it--I think it fits nicely into this category.

 

[Quillwitch]

So what is it?

I read it as meaning 'a story that is contemporary, but the modern world sits on top of the numinous ancient, and it's still there, poking through.'

Folk of the computer age....could be. Digital dislocation,The fairy tales were exceedingly horrific, seriously sanitised.

Would I re-read The Loney? Probably not. But there was enough in it, I don't begrudge the reading.

He did say, for want of a better term. I think it's not about making fires with sticks, but about the way rocks stick up through vegetation, about where people belong, or feel they belong or don't belong.

A reassertion of the power of landscape, I think, and our sense of connection to it, landscapes both geomorphological and ancestral; the 'whisperings within.'

That whispering within is what makes it deliciously creepy. Yes, your story fits in nicely, and so do some of mine! Thanks for this information. I think in a sense things such as Tarot and Ley Lines have that feeling, don´t you think?

 

[Quillwitch]

Bought a book recently, by Robert MacFarlane and Jackie Morris: The Lost Words.

Not fiction, but very much in the spirit of what's been described under this term; folk realism. Words culled from the Oxford Children's encyclopaedia? Why? To make way for new, more relevant words like 'broadband.'

Ehhh???? Why not simply add the new words? An encyclopaedia should be evolving, getting fatter all the time.

Words like newt, no longer worth their space in a supposedly gold standard encyclopaedia! They've gone digi-potty. Geek-freakery. It's got to be rocked back.

“There is a shocking, proven connection between the decline in natural play and the decline in children’s wellbeing,” the letter said. A heated debate in the national press ensued, both for and against the lost words, and the collaboration between Morris and Macfarlane was born....

The Lost Words...article

View attachment 1974

I love this book, and the concepts in it. In the many courses I´ve taken on how to teach children and parents to read for pleasure, they have always highlighted the importance of playing and the importance of singing, rhyming games, and the likes in early ages. This helps children develop a sense of what words can do ( and the idea that words are fun) that later is important when children begin to read.