La revista Folklore. Electronic Journal of Folklore publica una ressenya del llibre A History of Catalan Folk Literature

 La revista Folklore. Electronic Journal of Folklore, en el vol. 83, publica una ressenya del llibre A History of Catalan Folk Literature escrita per Jonathan Roper, professor de la Universitat de Tartu (Estònia).

This welcome volume provides an overview of the activity of folklorists in Catalan-speaking  areas from  the onset  of Romanticism until today. Catalonia proper is the focus of a third of the book, while the Balearic Islands, together with the Valencian  Country  and  El  Carxe  take  up  a  further  third.  The  final third of the book  covers the Aragonese Strip,  Andorra, Northern Catalonia (in France) and L’Alguer (in Sardinia). A useful map on page xv shows these contiguous areas. The work concludes with a  valuable twenty-page bibliography and a triple-columned index.

But what we now have is a description of the development of folklore studies in a  particularly interesting area of Europe, available in English, which is full of details of folklorists who will be unknown to many of us. As such, it is an achievement that opens doors for those far from the Catalan countries to a vast quantity of research. It might also  serve  as  a  useful  model  for  those  compiling  histories  of  folkloristics  in  other  settings. And,  finally,  it  should  also  be  stated  that  one  of  the  most  heartening  aspects  of  this  history  is  that  so  much  of  the  period  it  covers  is  recent  –  a  sign  of  the  present  vitality  of folklore studies in this area.