ABSTRACT
CONTEXT Since early in the twentieth century, attention by anthropological folklorists to context has centered on the milieu of tradition-intellectual, spiritual, psychological, cultural, and physical. Writing about the mythology of the Trobriand Islanders off the eastern coast of New Guinea in the 1920s, the British social anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski perceived oral narrative as one component of a cultural “institution”—often the component that provided the rationale for the institution’s existence. Trobrianders told and understood their narratives within a particular context of institutional values, norms, personnel, paraphernalia, and activities. Malinowski’s emphasis on ways in which folklore related to other aspects of a society’s culture and contributed to its stability became central to a functional analysis of folklore through much of the twentieth century. He believed that folklore could be understood and appreciated only in terms of its context.
