Ó Giolláin, Exotic Dreams in the Science of the Volksgeist - Towards a Global History of European Folklore Studies

The emergence of folklore studies is usually attributed to specifically European circumstances in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This book argues that influences from and the consequences of the expansion of powerful states beyond the bounds of Europe informed folkloristics as much as did conditions within. The Noble Savage and the idea of heroic societies. Herder's voracious ethnographic reading. The scientific description of peoples over the Eurasian expanse of the...