‘Lincolnshire Folk Tales: Origins, Legacies, Connections, Futures’ is a project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and led by the Principal Investigator Dr Rory Waterman and the Research Fellow Dr Anna Milon in the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University. The project explores the origins, legacies, intertextual and social connections and futures of Lincolnshire folk tales, and is intended to facilitate wider engagement with this heritage from the general public, writers, and scholars.
What we do
The county has a rich heritage of folk tales, plenty with variants elsewhere in the country and farther afield, but many others wholly centred on specific local concerns linked to the specific history and heritage of the county; regarding the Legends of the Carrs collected by Marie Clothilde Balfour in 1891, for instance, Maureen James (2013) notes ‘an apparent lack of similar stories from other flatland areas’ beyond that region of Lincolnshire. The project involves collaborative partnerships with Heritage Lincolnshire, Adverse Camber, Five Leaves Publications, Lincolnshire Life magazine, and the University of Lincoln.
The project has the following five research questions at its core:
- How can we best explore and analyse Lincolnshire folk tales as responses to the cultural and historical circumstances that engendered them, trace those lineages, and contextualise them intertextually to explore their relationships to wider literatures? More broadly, how do folk tales respond to the specific cultural and social circumstances that engendered them?
- What might ‘lost’ folk tales contribute to wider literary understanding and creative endeavour, once restored to the canons of both literary research and artistic practice?
- How can writing, reading, discussing and (re)interpreting Lincolnshire folk tales make positive interventions for a wider public, i.e., in terms of representing or tackling contemporary lives and modern society?
- How can contemporary writers and poets respond to current social concerns and modern living through the reinterpretation of regionally-derived folk narratives, and in ways received as culturally and artistically significant?
- How have migrations into Lincolnshire – both national and international – augmented folk tale traditions in Lincolnshire, and how might they do so?
- How can we further develop structures and networks that enable folk tales to be (re)interpreted, developed, performed, and shared?
Who we are
Rory Waterman
Dr Waterman leads the Lincolnshire Folk Tales project, and is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Modern & Contemporary Literature at Nottingham Trent University. He is a prominent press critic and commentator, the author of four collections of poetry published by Carcanet Press and three critical monographs, has edited several anthologies, and founded and co-edits the poetry publisher New Walk Editions. At NTU, he lectures on the BA Creative Writing, BA English, MA Creative Writing, and MRes in English Literary Research, and supervises PhD students working in and on modern and contemporary literature and/or creative writing. He grew up in North Kesteven.
Anna Milon
Dr Milon is a postdoctoral research fellow on the project, who recently obtained her PhD from the University of Exeter. Before joining this project, she participated in a range of public outreach events, notably loaning items and developing a series of seminars for the ‘Fantasy: Realms of Imagination’ exhibition at the British Library. She occasionally teaches Myths & Legends of the British Isles and the History of British Witchcraft & Magic at Advanced Studies in England, a study abroad programme based in Bath. Her favourite Lincolnshire folk tale is The Dead Moon.
Our partners
This project is generously funded and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Nottingham Trent University. You can find more information about these and other partner organisations we work with here.
Lincolnshire Folk Tales Project 