What is the study of folk literature called?
Folklore studies
Folklore studies, also known as folkloristics, and occasionally tradition studies or folk life studies in Britain,[1] is the formal academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms,[note 1] gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. It became established as a field across both Europe and North America, coordinating with Volkskunde (German), folkermimne (Norwegian), and folkminnen (Swedish), among others.[2]
Folklore
The concept of "folk" proves somewhat more elusive. When Thoms first created this term, "folk" applied only to rural, frequently poor and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of "folk" is a social group which includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family." This expanded social definition of "folk" supports a broader view of the material, i.e. the lore, considered to be "folklore artifacts". These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore is no longer circumscribed as being chronologically old or obsolete. The folklorist studies the traditional artifacts of a social group and how they are transmitted.