Introduction: Representing and recovering the British- and Irish-American Marchen

Throughout the twentieth century, folklorists devoted more energy to denyin g or downplaying the existence of the British- and Irish-American Marchen t han to seeking out and learning form its narrators. This brief history of N orth American Marchen studies identifies some reasons for the academy's neg lect of the genre, outlines the careers of the two early collectors (Vance Randolph and Leonard Roberts) most responsible for documenting oral Marchen traditions, and weighs the enormous influence of Richard Chase and his boo k. The Jack Tales on both the academic community and the public at large. T he essay also traces the efforts of Herbert Halpert and others to advance B ritish- and Irish-American Marchen studies. It concludes by assessing impor tant recent Marchen scholarship (as exemplified in books by William B. McCa rthy, Charles L. Perdue Jr., and Herbert Halpert and J.D.A. Widdowson) and by describing the research of Perdue, Martin Lovelace, and Carl Lindahl inc luded in this volume.