Folklore
FOLKLORE. Folklorists have been interested in religion as an area of research since the beginnings of the discipline in the nineteenth century, although early folklorists often conceived the ...
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In the following excerpt, Barnes takes issue with prevailing attitudes in folklore criticism.
In their more melancholic moments, academics are often inclined to admit that the pursuit of scholarship i...
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In the following excerpt, Baker identifies varieties of typology in African-American folklore by examining an array of literary forms ranging from sermons to blues songs.
"The existing monument...
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In the following essay, Petesch explores the recurrence of certain folkloric themes and character types in the works of African-American writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and many others....
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In the following essay, Hill explores themes common to African and African-American folklore through an examination of elements, including storytelling and folk sayings, in novels and other writings.)...
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In the following essay, Bell compares the forging of an African-American literary consciousness in the writings of James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke, and others, with the development of national ident...
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In the following essay, Diepeveen examines the often ambivalent attitudes of Harlem Renaissance writers and thinkers toward the folklore of Africa and, more specifically, of African America.
During th...
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In the following excerpt, Dseagu explores the influence of folklore on areas such as plot structure and characterization in a number of African novels, including Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.
In...
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In the following essay, Lee assesses the use of dialect in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, and in works by Toni Morrison and GayI Jones.
The language of any people reflects t...
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In the following essay, Cleary identifies Thomas Berger's Little Big Man as a parody not only of Old West mythology, but of other myths as well.
It is a Western to end all Westerns, with all t...
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In the following essay, Drake distinguishes the work of the folklorist from that of his or her colleagues in a typical English department.
That folklorist would have to be very insensitive who was una...
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In the following essay, Lee explores the distinctions between fact and legend in the literature of the western, and recounts tales that made their way into the lore of the Old West.
Without intending ...
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In the following essay, Coffin presents F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as a retelling of an old folk tale with elements similar to those of John Keats's "La Belle Dame san...
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In the following essay, Dekker and Harris find evidence of "second sight" and other ghostly folk notions in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.
The doric voice of Hemingway�...
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In the following essay, Field identifies extensive uses of folklore in Thomas Wolfe's fragmentary novel The Hills Beyond, particularly in Wolfe's portrayal of the family's larger-...
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In the following excerpt, Brookes makes a case that Joel Chandler Harris was a literary artist rather than a mere recorder of others' tales.
American folklore began with Uncle Remus, some liter...
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In the following essay, Bluestein examines the methodology of, and resulting themes in, Constance Rourke's American Humor.
With one exception, very little analysis of the method and approach of...
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In the following excerpt, Hudson examines the folkloric roots of works by an array of American poets from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Wallace Stevens.
At Cairo, Illinois, the Ohio joins the Mississi...
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In the following essay, Brown assesses the embodiment of the Native American oral tradition in don Juan, the Indian sorcerer who figures prominently in Journey to Ixtlan and other books by Carlos Cast...
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In the following essay, Clements compares the uses of folk history in works by N. Scott Momaday and Leslie Marmon Silko.
Most literary artists who are sympathetic to folklore view oral literature and ...
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In the following excerpt, Bell discusses the formation of an African-American "high art" in contrast to the literature of the black folk consciousness.
Groping toward a realization of Af...
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The categories of myth, legend and folktale have commonly been used as synonymous terms, however, this is not correct. Each have a style of their own although borders between the three are often blu...
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Folklore
