The folk tradition in the fiction of black women writers

Some of the increased scholarly interest in Black literature and folklore in the last three decades has focused on the function of folklore or folk elements in the writings of Black authors. Black women writers in particular incorporated folk materials insightfully into their fiction, following the innovations of Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison. These three writers are bound by the tradition of realistic fiction that identifies and extols the virtues of a community located in a cultural space with a rich folk tradition extending from the history and tradition of Black people in the diaspora. Hurston, Marshall, and Morrison have inherited an oral tradition developed over centuries of prosperity, assault, travail, and struggle and informed by folk ritual, legend, customs, lore, myth, superstitions, expressions, setting, and the idea. The folk idea, a group of people's traditional assumptions about the nature of humanity and the world, provides a framework for identifying and examining those notions that inform the Black fiction writer. This study suggests that one folk idea--that material gain does not assure happiness or spiritual wholeness--consciously or unconsciously informs the work of these women. Chapter I introduces the concept of the folk idea, and the general concerns of the three writers. Chapter II establishes Hurston as a forerunner in the folk tradition with her use of folk expression, folktales, folkloric setting, and creation of the folk hero and heroine. Chapter III treats Marshall's use of the West Indian folk tradition to portray female protagonists influenced by it. Chapter IV examines Toni Morrison's transformation of the folktale, folk setting and heroes, storytelling, and superstition to create sophisticated modern fable. Indirectly influenced by Hurston, both Marshall and Morrison affect the work of other Black women writers, as discussed in Chapter V. These writers' clear directions for human and racial survival denounce materialistic indulgence and individualism and encourage acceptance and understanding of cultural history.