A Hidden Pot of Charm Scholarship: The History of Critical Reflections on Charms in Croatian Folkloristics

Abstract

The paper offers an overview of critical reflections on charms in Croatian folkloristics and related disciplines (literary theory and history, paleoslavistics). By highlighting the most important steps in the institutionalization of folklore research in Croatia we are showing the status of verbal charm both in the process of field research and the critical reflection. The most important contribution of Croatian scholars is classification of verbal charm as an oral rhetorical genre, which offered the possibility for different methodological approaches to the study of charms.