SOURCE: "That Which 'The Whole World Knows': Functions of Folklore in Eudora Welty's Stories," in The Southern Quarterly, Vol. XXXII, No. 1, Fall, 1993, pp. 9-15.

In the following essay, Vaschenko discusses the folklore elements present in Welty's short fiction.

When it is approached, the subject defined appears to be a part of the general mystery that the stories of Eudora Welty present for any attentive reader. Yet the literary and the folk do intertwine in such an unprecedented way in her narration that this constitutes a challenge for any critical mind.

This approach to the short stories and novellas of Welty reveals some of their complexity of form and meaning, for the genres of folklore employed are as various as the means to employ them. Indeed, the field to be covered quite unexpectedly may turn out to be so vast that it cannot be encompassed here. Yet what may...