SOURCE: "Jesse Stuart's Use of Folklore," in Jesse Stuart: Essays on His Work, edited by J. R. LeMaster and Mary Washington Clarke, The University Press of Kentucky, 1977, pp. 115-29.

In the following essay, Clarke explores Stuart's use of folklore in his short stories, contending that, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, Stuart provides an original, authentic voice to American literature.

Assessment of the extent and function of folklore in Stuart's writing is a task made relatively easy because of his time and place. His writing career has coincided with development of academic folklore studies in major universities, and some aspects of Kentucky folklore have been collected and analyzed more carefully than those of some other regions, making it possible to compare field-collected data with an author's rendition. In addition, Stuart has been remarkably cooperative with investigators of his life and works, freely responding to inquiries and sometimes...