Manuscripts and Broadsheets. Narrative Genres and the Communication Circuit among Working-Class Youth in early 20th-Century Finland

Abstract

This article explores the hazy boundary between folklore and literature, orality and literacy in relation to the individual and the community. How do people who belong to the first generation of active writers in their family and community express their own experiences through fictional narratives and the literary tradition? This question is explored in relation to the working-class youth in the small industrial community of Karkkila (Högfors) in southern Finland. The most important research materials are the editions of hand-written newspapers written by these young people from 1914 to 1925. My theoretical background is derived from both folklore studies and book history. Inspired by the research of Robert Darnton, I have outlined the communication circuit of the working-class youth during the early 20th century, discussing the position of the manuscript tradition (hand-written newspapers, manuscript songbooks, minutes) in relation to the printed texts (books, newspapers, broadsheets) and the oral tradition. In my article I focus on the narratives of love in the manuscripts written by the working-class youth. How do they work with the ideas and narrative genres and themes adopted from the printed media and the oral tradition? I outline fictionalization of personal experiences and localization of fictional, printed texts as two basic narrative strategies utilized in these processes.Key words: broadsheets, communication networks, fictionality, folk songs, hand-written newspapers, literacy, manuscript tradition, narratives of love, orality, working-class youth Narrative as a theoretical concept and as a methodological tool has been intensively discussed both by folklorists and literary historians. This article explores the hazy boundary between folklore and literature, orality and literacy, in relation to the individual and the community. How do people who belong to the first generation of active writers in their family and community express their own experiences through fictional narratives and the literary tradition?My conclusions are based on a case study of the literary activities of young working-class people in Karkkila (Högfors) 1 , a small industrial community in southern Finland, in the 1910s and 1920s. During this period, the young men and women of this community produced a large collection of hand-written newspapers named Valistaja (The Enlightener). The paper was confiscated by the police in 1926 because of the communist political orientation of its writers. It provided a medium for discussing political questions and practising literary genres. At the beginning of the 1980s, a pile of issues of The Enlightener was found in the attic of the local http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol33/salmi.pdf

Naujos Knygos Istorijos Tyrimų Ir Pedagogikos Kryptys (Anglų K.)

“…Neither allows for the history of the book in Asia, for example, where pictographic writing systems have meant different developments in relation to printing [19]. Even in the European context, there is no room in the circuit model or the universal chronology for specific regional histories -the persistence of handwritten books in Finland [20], or the resistance in Lithuania to the banning of the national press in the nineteenth century [24]. Nor does the narrative apply to any situation where we want to take into account the writing systems used by aboriginal people; in the case of Canada, Germaine Warkentin argues that we should learn to think of the beaded wampum belts used by some native-Canadian tribal groups as a form of "text" -and therefore to think of the history of the book in Canada beginning with native peoples' writing systems, rather than with introduction of the first printing press in the eighteenth century [27].…”

Making of Modernity in the Vernacular: On the Grassroots Variations of Finnish Socialism in the Early Twentieth Century

“…Tapio Bergholm suggested that the Finnish popular movements at the turn of the twentieth century were not characterized by a deep antagonism between passionate hatred and rational education, but powerful collective emotions and enlightenment ideals coexisted simultaneously (2002). While the major Finnish interpretations during the 1980s and 1990s tended to explain the nature of the socialist labour movement either as an instigator of violent class conflict (Ehrnrooth 1992) or as a constructive element in the rise of civil society (Alapuro et al 1987), it seems that the latest research has moved beyond the antagonism between emotion and reason (Teräs 2001;Salmi-Niklander 2004;Suodenjoki 2010;Rajavuori 2017). These studies have carefully analyzed proletarian agency in local contexts by limiting their focus on individual communities.…”

Rahvas ja kirjallisuuden rikkaruohot

“…Joissakin tapauksissa voidaan puhua kollektiivisesta tai sosiaalisesta tekijyydestä. 22 Tästä käy esimerkiksi seuraava kuvaus, jossa arkkiveisuja tuotetaan oman viiteryhmän käyttöön: Nuoriso kun on keräytynyt iltakisaan jonkun sellaisen kaupungin läheisyyteen, jossa on kirjapaino, tuleepa samaan seuraan kaupungista nuori latojakin ja siinä lempi-ja piirilauluja laulettaessa esittää jokainen oman lemmekkäämpänsä, kauniimpansa. (--) Wuoropuolinen laulujen oppimisen tilaisuus on siis tässä, kun kukin seuranjäsen haluaa toisilta kuullut laulut muistiinsa saada.…”