The Pathology of Folklore “Generals” Textbooks in Iran

From the eighty’s onward, after the emergence of folklore culture and literature into academic field, a change occurred in the field. Various research works in forms of book, thesis, article, etc. are written on different subjects every day. Some of the main works among these are the books that should have distinctive features in the field of folklore literature as basic works, so that they could bear the educational and research objectives of the field. One type of folklore literature book is “Generals”. By the name “Generals”, it is meant that they deal with different subjects in the field of folklore literature, and these works are generally written and published for teaching. However, they have a crucial role in the basics and general issues related to the studies in this field. Although the publication rate of these books is growing on a daily basis, no criticism has been done about them yet in order to categorize and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these works, and consequently help researchers for an informed selection of these works. Considering the significance of this issue in this article, five important books from folklore generals’ book series are selected and criticized according to their publication time from the first one in the fifties to the books of the late decade. Since these books are generally taught at universities considering the educational department's enactments in the field of folklore culture and literature, these works were criticized and compared from the aspects of form and content, succession, generality and scope, theory application, revision and scientific validity, reader-friendliness of background and principles, etc.