When and where was Stith Thompson born?
Stith Thompson was born in Bloomfield, Nelson County, Kentucky on the 7th of March 1885. He grew up as the son of John Warden and Eliza McClaskey.
Stith Thompson was born in Bloomfield, Nelson County, Kentucky on the 7th of March 1885. He grew up as the son of John Warden and Eliza McClaskey.
Stith Thompson earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1909 and a master's degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley in 1912. His undergraduate thesis focused on The Return from the Dead in Popular Tales and Ballads while his dissertation examined The Idea of the Soul in Teutonic Popular Tales and Ballads.
Stith Thompson joined Indiana University Bloomington in 1921 and began offering courses dedicated to folklore within one year. He created the first doctoral program in folklore at an American university in 1949 with Warren E. Roberts receiving the first doctorate awarded by this new program in 1953.
Stith Thompson published his six-volume Motif-Index of Folk-Literature between 1932 and 1936 and revised these volumes again between 1955 and 1958. He also published an expanded translation of Antti Aarne's The Types of the Folktale in 1928 and released Tales of the North American Indians in 1929.
A permanent Institute of Folklore finally opened at Bloomington in 1962 with Richard Dorson leading it. This institute helped bring structure to the growing discipline through its journal publications and summer meetings following Thompson's retirement from tenure in 1955.