Stith Thompson was an American scholar of
folkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
. He is the "Thompson" of the
Aarne-Thompson classification systemThe Aarne–Thompson classification system is a system for classifying folktales. First developed by Antti Aarne and published in 1910, it was translated and enlarged by Stith Thompson...
.
Biography
Stith Thompson, born in
BloomfieldBloomfield is a city in Nelson County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 855 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Bloomfield is located at ....
, Nelson County, Kentucky, on March 7, 1885 as the son of John Warden and Eliza (McCluskey) Thompson moved with his family to Indianapolis at the age of twelve. He attended Butler College and obtained his BA degree from University of Wisconsin. For the next two years he taught high school in
Portland, OregonPortland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, where he learned Norwegian. He earned his master’s degree in English literature from University of California, Berkeley in 1912. He studied at Harvard University from 1912 to 1914; taught English at the University of Texas, Austin from 1914 to 1918; and obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1919.
Thompson joined the
EnglishEnglish studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
faculty of Indiana University (Bloomington), teaching composition. Interested in traditional
balladA ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s and tales, he organized summer institutes on the subject at the university that ran from the 1940s to the 1960s. These led, in 1962, to Thompson and another preeminent student of folklore,
Richard DorsonRichard Mercer Dorson was an American folklorist, author, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University.Dorson was born in New York City. He studied at the Phillips Exeter Academy from 1929 to 1933....
, founding the University's Folklore Institute - still active .
While Thompson wrote, co-wrote, or translated numerous books and articles on folklore, he became arguably best known for his work on the classification of
motifIn narrative, a motif is any recurring element that has symbolic significance in a story. Through its repetition, a motif can help produce other narrative aspects such as theme or mood....
s in folk tales. His six-volume
Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (1932–37) is considered the international key to traditional material.
Other works
Thompson's 1954 article for The Filson Club Historical Quarterly entitled The Beauchamp Family is still being used by genealogists. In this article Thompson states that he is descended from a Costin Beauchamp (b.1738) from Somerset Co., Maryland which extends back to
John BeauchampJohn Beauchamp was one of the influential members of the Plymouth Company.John Beauchamp was the son of Thomas Beauchamp of Cosgrove and Dorothy Beauchamp. He was born about 1592 in England. On December 27, 1615 he married Alice Freeman. They had seven children...
one of the members of the Plymouth Company.
External links