An Analysis of Black Folklore in 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' Essay Example
An Analysis of Black Folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching God
I. Introduction to Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God Born in Notasulga, Alabama and raised in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated all-black town in America, Hurston knew this black culture firsthand. Not only did she grow up in all black community in the south, but she traveled throughout the South and in the West Indies as an anthropologist collecting folk materials independently with funding from private patrons or fellowships, as a doctoral student wording under Franz Boas, father of American anthropology (Cataliotti, 1995:100). She has been primarily interested in collecting the folk songs and sayings of her people. In one way or another, most of Hurston’s major works stem from her anthropological interests and fieldwork collections. For example, while engaged in research in 1929, she had the idea her first book, Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), which is Hurston’s first try to appropriate black folklore in an elaborate literary form of novel. Although the novel was undervalued just like Hurston herself by that time, many aspects of black folklore were easily identified, including folk tales, folk songs, folk speech, folk sermons and various hoodoo rituals. Along with the rediscovery of Hurston, Jonah’s Gourd Vine has been considered as an excellent work. In addition, Hurston’s folklore collections during the period from 1927 to 1932 are compiled into Mules and Men (1935). This book, dealing for the first time with Afro-American folklore from the perspective of the black rural community, is notable because it ties together the numerous stories in an overall narrative structure and thus gives the reader a sense of the original context that produced them (Benesch, 1988: 627). Obviously, Hurston’s two earlier books had already proved Hurston's particular interest in black folk culture. In 1937, Hurston wrote her most influential work Their Eyes Were Watching God
I. Introduction to Zora Neale Hurston and Their Eyes Were Watching God Born in Notasulga, Alabama and raised in Eatonville, Florida, the first incorporated all-black town in America, Hurston knew this black culture firsthand. Not only did she grow up in all black community in the south, but she traveled throughout the South and in the West Indies as an anthropologist collecting folk materials independently with funding from private patrons or fellowships, as a doctoral student wording under Franz Boas, father of American anthropology (Cataliotti, 1995:100). She has been primarily interested in collecting the folk songs and sayings of her people. In one way or another, most of Hurston’s major works stem from her anthropological interests and fieldwork collections. For example, while engaged in research in 1929, she had the idea her first book, Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), which is Hurston’s first try to appropriate black folklore in an elaborate literary form of novel. Although the novel was undervalued just like Hurston herself by that time, many aspects of black folklore were easily identified, including folk tales, folk songs, folk speech, folk sermons and various hoodoo rituals. Along with the rediscovery of Hurston, Jonah’s Gourd Vine has been considered as an excellent work. In addition, Hurston’s folklore collections during the period from 1927 to 1932 are compiled into Mules and Men (1935). This book, dealing for the first time with Afro-American folklore from the perspective of the black rural community, is notable because it ties together the numerous stories in an overall narrative structure and thus gives the reader a sense of the original context that produced them (Benesch, 1988: 627). Obviously, Hurston’s two earlier books had already proved Hurston's particular interest in black folk culture. In 1937, Hurston wrote her most influential work Their Eyes Were Watching God