Folklore’s Horizon: the French Legacies of Félix Arnaudin (1844-1921)

‘Folklore’ has not been a powerful academic discipline in France. This is not just a question of an alien term that failed to take root: the paradigm of folklore studies has never enjoyed much success. While part of the explanation for this concerns the association of folklore studies with nationalist and regionalist movements and with the Vichy régime (1940-1944), this article argues that the folklorists themselves, men like Félix Arnaudin (1844-1921) are partly to blame. Although Félix was an assiduous and careful ethnographer, he was largely typical of the French folklorists in eschewing theory and lacking respect for the practitioners of folk traditions. Rather than a coherent methodology, Félix pursued a chimera of exhaustivity which was undermined by his own inexplicit exclusions. While it would be unfair to say that there is no interest in folklore in France, its horizons have been seriously curtailed by the shortcomings of Félix’s generation.