Transforming Audiences for Oral Tradition: Child, Kittredge, Thompson, and Connections of Folklore and English Studies

The author examines the careers of Francis James Child, first professor of English at Harvard, and his followers George Lyman Kittredge and Stith Thompson to show how these early professionals’ decisions regarding audience and the relationship of literary and folkloric studies to composition helped to establish issues and audiences in English studies. She suggests that recognition of lingering limitations from the discipline’s early days may enable academics to consider different choices today.