Morris dancing is one of the more individual of English folk customs and one that has been greatly misunderstood. Seen as a descendant of pagan folk ritual, the tradition of morris dancing has been based on calendar customs and distorted by preconceptions imposed on it by the folklorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. John Forrest has carefully analysed the wealth of evidence to show that morris dancing does not in fact have pagan or ancient origins. His examination of the early documentation traces the passage of dance ideas between groups of people who have conventionally been considered folklorically distinct and ties morris traditions into the wider area of communal customs and public celebrations. Twenty years in the making and impeccably researched with a huge treasury of source material, "A History of Morris Dancing 1458-1750" is an essential reference work for anthropologists, social historians, and specialists in English literature.

The History of Morris Dancing: Import

Forrest, John

History

James Clarke

The first reference to a dance called 'morris' dates from 1458, but few early sources have so far been available to the folklorists who have attempted to track down its supposed ancient pagan origins. Now, drawing on material he helped to compile for an archive of documentary records, Forrest has produced a fascinating survey of the dance's early history, which uses a new approach to draw the study of morris traditions into the wider area of communal customs and public celebrations.

The History of Morris Dancing 1458-1750 (Studies in Early English Drama)

Literature & Fiction

British & Irish

Traditional quilts serve many purposes over the course of a useful life. Beginning as a beautiful bed covering, a quilt may later function as a ground cover at picnics until years of wear relegate it to someone's ragbag for scrap uses. Observing this life cycle led authors John Forrest and Deborah Blincoe to the idea that quilts, like living things, have a natural history that can be studied scientifically. They explore that natural history through an examination of the taxonomy, morphology, behavior, and ecology of quilts in their native environment--the homes of humans who make, use, keep, and bestow them. The taxonomy proposed by Forrest and Blincoe is rooted in the mechanics of replicating quilts so that it can be used to understand evolutionary and genetic relationships between quilt types. The morphology section anatomizes normal and abnormal physical features of quilts, while the section on conception and birth in the life cycle discusses how the underlying processes of replication intersect with environmental factors to produce tangible objects. This methodology is applicable to many kinds of crafts and will be of wide interest to students of folklore, anthropology, and art history. Case studies of traditional quilts and their makers in the Catskills and Appalachia add a warm, human dimension to the book.

The Natural History of the Traditional Quilt

Arts & Photography

Blincoe, Deborah

History & Criticism

University of Texas Press

Traditional quilts serve many purposes over the course of a useful life. Beginning as a beautiful bed covering, a quilt may later function as a ground cover at picnics until years of wear relegate it to someone's ragbag for scrap uses. Observing this life cycle led authors John Forrest and Deborah Blincoe to the idea that quilts, like living things, have a natural history that can be studied scientifically. They explore that natural history through an examination of the taxonomy, morphology, behavior, and ecology of quilts in their native environment—the homes of humans who make, use, keep, and bestow them. The taxonomy proposed by Forrest and Blincoe is rooted in the mechanics of replicating quilts so that it can be used to understand evolutionary and genetic relationships between quilt types. The morphology section anatomizes normal and abnormal physical features of quilts, while the section on conception and birth in the life cycle discusses how the underlying processes of replication intersect with environmental factors to produce tangible objects. This methodology is applicable to many kinds of crafts and will be of wide interest to students of folklore, anthropology, and art history. Case studies of traditional quilts and their makers in the Catskills and Appalachia add a warm, human dimension to the book.

The Natural History of the Traditional Quilt (African Writers)

Explorations in Australia (Large Print Edition)

BiblioLife

Explorations in Australia

Natural History of the Traditional Quilt

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Diane Pub Co.

Lord I'm Coming Home: Everyday Aesthetics in Tidewater North Carolina (The Anthropology of Contemporary Issues)

Americas

Cornell University Press

Lord I'm Coming Home focuses on a small, white, rural fishing community on the southern reaches of the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. By means of a new kind of anthropological fieldwork, John Forrest seeks to document the entire aesthetic experience of a group of people, showing the aesthetic to be an "everyday experience and not some rarefied and pure behavior reserved for an artistic elite."
The opening chapter of the book is a vivid fictional narrative of a typical day in "Tidewater," presented from the perspective of one fisherman. In the following two chapters the author sets forth the philosophical and anthropological foundations of his book, paying particular attention to problems of defining "aesthetic," to methodological concerns, and to the natural landscape of his field site. Reviewing his own experience as both participant and observer, he then describes in scrupulous detail the aesthetic forms in four areas of Tidewater life: home, work, church, and leisure. People use these forms, Forrest shows, to establish personal and group identities, facilitate certain kinds of interactions while inhibiting others, and cue appropriate behavior. His concluding chapter deals with the different life cycles of men and women, insider-outsider relations, secular and sacred domains, the image and metaphor of "home," and the essential role that aesthetics plays in these spheres. 
The first ethnography to evoke the full aesthetic life of a community, Lord I'm Coming Home will be important reading not only for anthropologists but also for scholars and students in the fields of American studies, art, folklore, and sociology.

Morris dancing, one of the more peculiar of the English folk customs, has been greatly misunderstood. Traditional scholarship on this custom has been based on the assumption that morris dancing is one of the pagan calendar rituals, a preconception held by many folklorists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 
Now, building upon his previous work with Michael Heaney of the Bodleian Library in Annals of Early Morris, John Forrest carefully analyses a wealth of evidence to show that morris dancing does not, in fact have pagan or ancient origins. His examination of early documentation draws morris traditions into the wider area of communal customs and public celebrations, showing the passage of dance ideas between groups of people who until now have been considered folklorically distinct. 
Careful, detailed, and encyclopedic, The History of Morris Dancing, 1458-1750 is an essential reference work for specialists in English drama and social historians of the period.

The History of Morris Dancing, 1438-1750 (Studies in Early English Drama)

Humor & Entertainment

University of Toronto Press

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