Folklore of Southern literature as folkloristic process : portrayals of the Cane River region in the short stories of Louisiana's Ada Jack Carver

Gholson, Martha Rachel (2001) Folklore of Southern literature as folkloristic process : portrayals of the Cane River region in the short stories of Louisiana's Ada Jack Carver. Doctoral (PhD) thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This dissertation examines the short stories of north western Louisiana writer Ada Jack Carver (1880-1972), focussing on her portrayal of Louisiana's regional ethnicities. While situating Carver's writing within historical and cultural contexts, the discussion also describes the Melrose plantation literary group, examining this group in terms of theories concerning the uses of folklore in literature and theories that define folkgroups in occupational environments. The consideration of diverse classifications leads to a discussion of the links between theory concerning regional literature, folklore as process, and folklore in literature through the example of Carver's writing and association with the Melrose plantation literary group. How elements of the folklore corpus interact with literary manifestations of elite culture creating and propagating regional stereotypes, which become part and parcel of both regional concepts of ethnicity and the tourism trade in the 1990s, is the central focus of this dissertation.

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