Notes toward a European-American Folk Aesthetic: Lessons Learned from Singers and Storytellers I Have Known

In the first MacEdward Leach-Stith Thompson Lecture, delivered 20 October 1990 at the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in Oakland, California, Kenneth S. Goldstein reflects on his nearly 40 years offieldwork. Over the course of those years he has worked with slightly more than a thousand informants. The lecture advocates the authority of informants' points of view and urges the recognition of "bigness" as an element in a European-American folk aesthetic.