Orality for Children in Croatian Ethnology and Folkloristics

Interes hrvatske etnologije i folkloristike za usmenost za djecu u ovom se radu institucionalno, epistemološki i svjetonazorski kontekstualizira na dvjema razinama – razini povijesti istraživanja djece i istraživanja usmenosti. Nakon interpretacije uvjeta i implikacija nevidljivosti usmenosti za djecu u radovima o dječjem folkloru, a zatim i u radovima o usmenoj književnosti, u radu se propituju mogućnosti, odnosno zadanosti interpretacije starijih etnoloških i folklorističkih tekstova kao izvora za raspravu o usmenosti za djecu u tradicijskim sredinama na prijelazu iz 19. u 20. stoljeće.children is in this article contextualized institutionally, epistemologically and referentially on two levels – the level of the history of the research of children, especially children’s folklore and the level of the history of research of oral forms, especially oral literature. After interpreting the conditions and implications of theoretical visibility and analytical invisibility of orality for children in the writings on children and children’s folklore from the 1970s, the article offers the interpretation of the conditions and implications of only slightly more pronounced interest for orality for children in the field of oral literature. The (in)visibility of orality for children in the writings on children’s folklore can be explained in relation to Croatian reception of contextual folkloristics, i.e., the focus of those research attempts on the interpretation of folklore as communication in small groups. The non-existence of systematic research of children folklore in 1980s can be justified by specific institutional and individual preferences but also by the inclination to phantom children as economically, politically and symbolically marginal subjects. (Non)interest in orality for children under the frameworks of the research of orality, i.e. oral literature, is in turn contextualized in the relation to the already mentioned marginal status of children, but also in relation to the recent focus of ethnology and folkloristics on the historical levels and cultural practices of the past, and hence, elder informants. However, the observed ‘visibilities’ of orality for children in the research of oral literature are the staring points of the concluding part of this article, which questions the possibilities, i.e. characteristics and possible interpretations of ethnological and folkloristic writings as the sources for the analysis of orality for children in traditional culture in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century