Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century American Literature. (Reviews).

Karen E. Beardslee. Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations: Selfhood and Cultural Tradition in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century American Literature. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001. 202 pp. $27.00.

Karen Beardslee's Literary Legacies, Folklore Foundations (hereafter Legacies) is a valuable contribution to a distinguished group of studies on folklore in literature. Her study sets itself apart in a number of ways. First, the author is concerned not only with illuminating the connections between folklore and fictional works for scholars, but she is equally mindful of teachers. Hence, she expresses an interest in the impact works such as hers may have in the pedagogical as well as the theoretical realms. This pragmatic concern gives the work a down-to-earth quality that will undoubtedly broaden its appeal, making it more interesting not only to scholars in folklore and literature, but also to teachers in these fields.

Legacies is also distinct in that it covers fictional works with characters from different ethnic groups, whereas most such studies focus only on works by authors from one group. Along these lines, the organization of Legacies is a departure from what we have come to expect. Instead of simply focusing on works by a single author or from a particular period, Beardslee chooses to pair in each chapter an earlier work of literature with a contemporary work in which the characters are from the same ethnic group. Chapter one pairs Harriet Beecher Stowe's The Minister's Wooing and Whitney Otto's How to Make an American Quilt; chapter two discusses Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman and David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident; chapter three examines Zitkala-Sa's American Indian Stories and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony; and chapter four is devoted to Maria Cristina Mena's "The Birth of the God of War" and Roberta Fernandez's Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories. Another noteworthy aspect of Beardslee's work is that it considers more than oral genres of folklore, including, for example, quilting as the central folkioric genre in one of its chapters. Perhaps the most important and distinguishing feature of this study is the thematic critical focus that ties all of the chapters together. This theme can be summed up as the role that folklore plays in the individual's "journey to wholeness" and self-knowledge.

In most cases, the distinctive features of the book can be viewed as both strengths and weaknesses, depending on the reader's perspective. For example, readers (and especially teachers) more interested in a multicultural study of folklore and literature will find the inclusion of several ethnic groups in the same book exciting and practical. On the other hand, scholars who work primarily in one area of ethnic literature, who devote most of their research to authors of one historical period or literary movement, or who concentrate their study on one author, may discover that only one section of the book is of interest. Most folk-lorists will likely fall into similar camps. While some folklorists are concerned from time to time with intersections between oral and written genres, most are focused on particular traditions within specific ethnic or otherwise-defined folk groups--for instance, material culture among African Americans, or Mexican American proverbs. Those folklorists who do concentrate on connections between literature and oral traditions will notice the pronounced oversight of many references in this area and wonder about the author's assertion that "this type of folklore and literature study may be fairly new." Readers in general will be puzzled that chapter one considers quilting groups of white American women as parallels to the clearly-defined ethnic groups of African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos focused on in subsequent chapters. The first chapter also stands out for the absence of any consideration of racial issues in the discussion of connections between the performances of quilting in folk traditions and elements of the texts.

The major strength of this very compelling study is in the author's insight into relationships among folklore, community, and individual selfhood. She sets the stage for her exploration of the texts with an anecdote about the importance of her family's folklore in her own personal search. She writes: "The process of listening to and learning to tell my grandfather's stories connects me to the past, situates me in the present, and prepares me for the future. It is an ongoing and sometimes arduous process, but when it comes to the current questions I have about myself, I am finding the answers through folklore." Without extensive theorizing, Beardslee examines the journeys inherent in the lives of characters in novels, illuminating the key role that folklore plays in the resolution of various emotional crises, some arising from issues of race and others from gender. The author is careful always to locate folklore and its potential for healing in the context of community, highlighting the positive role of relati onships determined by traditional beliefs, behaviors, and social structures. As such, a folkloric motif that posits the return and reclamation of cultural tradition as the antidote to the fragmentation, isolation, and crises of belief in the modernist and post-modernist ages becomes the driving theoretical impulse of the book. On the one hand, the book might benefit from a greater problematizing of this impulse. On the other hand, however, the profundity of Beardslee's explorations into the characters she discusses, as well as the depth of her analysis when examining the impact of folklore on the transformation of these characters more than makes up for some of the technical problems mentioned above. This is jewel of a book that folklorists, teachers, and literary critics concerned with the impact of cultural traditions on literature and on the lives of real persons will want to add to their libraries.