Folklore: An Emerging Discipline — Selected Essays of Herbert Halpert. By Martin Lovelace, Paul Smith and J. D. A. Widdowson, eds. (St. John’s: Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Publications, 2002. Pp. xxi + 398, ISBN 0-88901-335-7)

Lovelace, Smith, and Widdowson gathered these essays with two goals: 1) to make available a variety of Halpert essays that were previously difficult to acquire; and 2) to exhibit some of Halpert’s most important contributions to folkloristics, especially in folksong and narrative scholarship. Together, they demonstrate Halpert’s vast influence on the discipline, both for presenting his extensive fieldwork and fieldwork methodology, and for his attention to the emerging issues of context and genre classification. For an autobiographical introduction on his entry into folklore, one can begin with the first essay, “Coming into Folklore More Than Fifty Years Ago” (1992). For further bibliographic details, however, one should turn to Neil Rosenberg’s biographical sketch of Halpert in Folklore Studies in Honour of Herbert Halpert: A Festchrift (1980). Folklore: An Emerging Discipline is divided into six sections: Issues and Approaches, Performers, Folksong, Cante Fable, Legend, and Folktale. For an overview of Halpert’s methodology and goals, one can focus primarily on the Issues and Approaches section. These four essays present not only the theoretical and practical issues of folkloristics during Halpert’s career, but they also foreshadow questions and concerns that continue to shape the field today. “Aggressive Humor on the East Branch” (1946) is a presentation of early fieldwork issues while working with raftsmen and lumbermen in the Catskills, along the Delaware river. In “American Regional Folklore” (1947), Halpert critiques and calls for increased research, publishing, and definition on regionally based traditions. “Folklore: Breadth Versus Depth” (1958) is about his concern with the lack of contextual detail in many folklore collections. In “Folklore and Obscenity: Definitions and Problems” (1962), he tackles the question of defining obscenity, and likewise how to collect and publish it. These four essays demonstrate the ongoing concern with fieldwork methodology, genre definition and taxonomy, regional identity, and the role of publishing in supporting the structure and goals of our discipline. Halpert’s reputation as a bibliophile is firmly entrenched here. Likewise, his well-known calls for increased fieldwork, especially via students in their own communities, are sprinkled throughout. The section titled Performers contains three essays on storytellers and folk heroes. Here we are given data and analysis using methodologies introduced in the previous section. “Indiana Storyteller” (1942), a study of storytelling through a single artist, contains a transcription of an interview between Halpert and storyteller Jim Pennington, and several collected stories along with motive and bibliographic references. The reader can guage Halpert’s rapport with the artist, his ways of soliciting information, and his ability to trace the origins of these stories. “Oregon Smith, An Indiana Folk Hero” (1942) is about a man whom Halpert first encountered through a student’s fieldwork. He subsequently met Smith, and learned about his tall tales of travel between Indiana and Oregon. “John Darling, A New York Munchausen” (1944) is about a folk hero in the western part of the Catskills who started a cycle of stories of himself as hero, drawing on the style of Munchausen and on tales of foreign origin. All three essays demonstrate Halpert’s early emphasis on contextual details. Under Folksong, we can see Halpert’s role in two parts of a disciplinary paradigm shift: the discovery of / definition of “American” folksong as an entity outside of Anglo-European derived variants, and the interest in musicological, as well as social and text-based analysis of folksong. In “Federal Theatre and Folksong” (1938), Halpert discusses the role of the Federal Theater National Service Bureau in collecting and promoting American-based song. He gives special attention to “Negro” songs, and makes special note of George Herzog’s musicological contributions to this project. “Truth in Folk Songs. Some Observations on the …