Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, visiting professor of comparative studies and director of the Center for Folklore Studies at The Ohio State University, discusses folk interpretations of eclipses. He suggests that viewers look at their own lives for examples of folklore, whether it’s what a person does for an event like an eclipse or whom they share it with. He saw an eclipse in 2017 on a pontoon boat on the Tennessee River. His boat and the others nearby all played Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” during the event, in an uncoordinated “folk response” to the eclipse. He goes on to discuss how science and folklore can work together to explain natural phenomena. Folklore is “everyday expressive behavior.” In the case of eclipses, making something like a pinhole camera to view the event is both a scientific activity and an everyday one. Lastly, Waugh-Quasebarth explains a common eclipse folklore trope: the sun being consumed by a monstrous being or an animal.

https://news.osu.edu

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