Alan Dundes Quotes

If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research.

I always use primary sources, in addition to reading biographies and other materials.

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

Their term project consists of a fieldwork collection of folklore that they create by interviewing family members, friends, or anyone they can manage to persuade to serve as an informant.

My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.

I find all folklore challenging, and I never cease to be grateful that I became a professional folklorist.

I just love rolling up my sleeves and doing research, and I especially love doing research on the origins of folklore and the origins of mythology.

The research. It is always the best part of writing. And, of course, it is the great excuse to travel.

Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should.

That's what the holidays are for - for one person to tell the stories and another to dispute them. Isn't that the Irish way?

In my family, telling stories is just a way of life.

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.

I don't read many popular histories like the ones I write. The building blocks for my research are scholarly monographs, and the inspiration for my storytelling style are folks like Chekhov.

I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.

Storytelling is important. Part of human continuity.

One of the questions I face when working on a book about a historical event is whether I should visit the actual place that I'm writing about. No matter how scrupulously maintained a historic house or battlefield may be, it is nothing like it was in the long-ago past.

To reconstruct stories and scenes, nonfiction writers must conduct vigorous and responsible research. In fact, narrative requires more research than traditional reportage, for writers cannot simply tell what they learn and know; rather, they must show it.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

History: Gossip well told.

I view my job more almost as a field biologist or anthropologist, where I'm collecting practices. I'm collecting techniques.

I come from a family of storytellers.

My mother was an oral storyteller. She would tell stories over and over again.

Storytelling is the oldest form of entertainment there is. From campfires and pictograms - the Lascaux cave paintings may be as much as twenty thousand years old - to tribal songs and epic ballads passed down from generation to generation, it is one of the most fundamental ways humans have of making sense of the world.

I am basically a folk singer because I'm coming from a part of the earth where folklore means a lot. The Mediterranean is a very old part of the world, and the more a place is old, the more there is folklore.