Hurston's Materialisation of Afro-American Oral Tradition & Dialect as Literary References
Zora
Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was indisputably one of the talented people who took
upon themselves the task of articulating a self-conscious and
collective expression of black culture; a task that commenced with
the literary and artistic explosion of the 1920s known as the Harlem
Renaissance. Novelist, folklorist, anthropologist, autobiographer,
playwright and critic, Zora Neale Hurston is rightfully considered
the most prolific writer of the Harlem Renaissance.
Before
undertaking to detect the qualities that established Hurston as a
metaphor for the black woman writer’s search for tradition, it is
wise to place her in a wider context and demonstrate the attitudes
towards Afro-American folk material.
There
were various approaches to art by the Harlem ‘literati’. For
example, W.E.B. Du Bois associated art with propaganda and
accordingly he directs artists to a polemical approach, thus
projecting a negative image of the lower class Negro people that
distinguishes them from the black elite. Alain Locke, another
contemporary pre-eminent figure, a distinguished academic who defined
the New Negro, albeit not an advocate of the social protest novel was
preoccupied with the elevation of the race, thus implying a desire
for respectability and acceptance within the established (white
people’s) socio-cultural milieu, and by extension an aspiration to
becoming urban rather than remaining loyal to one’s cultural roots.
Jessie Fauset was writing ‘passing’ novels, that is, novels
portraying the life of light-complexioned Afro-American women, the
‘tragic mulatta’ types, whose lives were determined by bourgeois
expectations. And, although, Jean Toomer was not an urban writer,
thus addressed rural and folk issues, his masterpiece Cane (1923) is
not written in dialect.
In
relation to the ‘Harlem literati’ circle, Hurston proclaimed
herself ‘Queen of the Niggerati’, thus allowing a trace of
Negroism to appear in her own personality. Hurston did not follow the
dominant contemporary literary trends but tried to establish herself
as an ‘oral artist’, a griot, that is ‘a person of the spoken
word’ whose ‘fate is tied to the fortunes and reputation of
orality’ (Miller,90). Therefore, she went counter to the
Afro-American intellectual hierarchy by believing in the inherent
poetic qualities of black dialect as well as in the material provided
by her own culture, even if this was preserved by the slaves.
Although
the study of the psychodynamics of orality was practically
non-existent in the 1920s, one must take into account that Zora Neale
Huston studied anthropology at Barnard College under Franz Boas, a
primary figure among the diffusionists[1]. Boas, in accordance with his
anthropological beliefs, does not adhere to a model of a superior and
dominating culture or race, but believes in independent historical
development of types of culture which develop along culturally
specific patterns (Boas,250).
Hurston’s
work revolves around the perspective that racial differences cannot
account for cultural differences and with this model in mind she
concentrates almost exclusively on black communities in an effort to
explore individual mental life and culture. Accordingly, she does not
repeat Joel Chandler Harris’s mistake of creating sharp linguistic
and behavioural contrasts between characters. Furthermore, she
deviates from the plantation tradition, for her characters develop
intra-racially rather than inter-racially. By treating folklore not
as a result of ‘survivals’ from primitive stages of illiterate
cultures, but as art forms, she invests in their cultural value where
each oral performance evidences the potential for ingenuous
complexity.
I
am now going to take a look at Mules and Men (1935) which
fully reflects her objective to re-evaluate the expressive forms of
illiterate rural people, and consolidates her stance as a strong
individualist who defied the dominant trends towards ‘Negroisms’.
Mules
and Men is replete with signs of the natural progress of the
societies at Eatonville -where Hurston was born- and Polk Country.
This natural progress is due to the fact that both societies
constitute idyllic microcosms, populated entirely by black people.
The representation of this pastoral milieu is quite a utopian one
since these societies cannot pose as the entire black community.
Nevertheless, it illustrates a standpoint of Hurston’s, later to
influence her political ideology that opposed her to the supreme
desegregation decision in 1954 and made her favour segregation to
integration. These societies are instances of autonomous development
which contributed to the community’s socio-cultural independence.
In these societies, entirely unimpeded by white people’s
constraints and Jim Crow practices, black people develop an
expressive potential of their own which stands for non-militant black
solidarity. Moreover, by indulging in the oral practices that derive
from their African ancestors, they explode racial stereotypes, since
their tales, songs, proverbs, etc. contain social comment and wisdom
while the constant activation of voice, the quasi-musical setting of
the line and rhythmic repetition imply power and movement towards the
audience.
Since
Mules and Men is not fiction but a collection of Afro-American
manifestations of orality, it is almost entirely rendered in direct
dialectal speech by its characters who are not treated as objects or
stereotypes, but portrayed as enunciating subjects who are not
defined in terms of binary oppositions such as black/white or
upper/lower class. Hurston introduces the reader to the material or
sometimes comments upon its cultural significance. Moreover, she
constantly experiments with voices. On the one hand, Hurston signals
her presence as a novelist by citing whole passages written in
overwrought language and by making use of adorned imagery and
elaborate artistic forms. On the other hand, her mastery of the rural
black southern dialect enables her to resort frequently to dialect
usage as an interlocutor. By mastering their code, Hurston ‘deforms
mastery’ with regard to ‘master and servant’ paradigms;
paradigms perpetuated by whites, but also by black urban chroniclers
like Du Bois or Locke who rejected dialect as a linguistic mask of
stupidity and ignorance in Afro-American literature.
To
be able to see the possibilities that are offered through dialect
usage, we should concentrate first on the variety of oral modes found
in Mules and Men. We are on safe ground to say that there is thematic
analogy between Hurston’s approach to Afro-American oral tradition
and Walt Whitman’s famous ‘catalogue technique’.
The
revivification and preservation of the tradition starts with a
collection of folk tales, or as they are called among the
Afro-Americans lies. In Afro-American culture stories and lies become
interchangeable terms (Dillard,140).
The
lies we have in Mules and Men can be reduced to various
categories. A lot of them illustrate the improvisatory and
imaginative ability Black people have in humanizing animals and
amusing themselves with references to certain behavioural patterns of
the animals. These animal tales are trickster tales. There are also
trickster tales revolving around the relationship between ‘Ole
Massa and John’ which underscore the point that the stereotype of
the unintelligent Negro was falsely fabricated and perpetuated by the
whites[2].
Another
category of tales are the why tales which give a humorous account of
various events, including the origin of mankind, the principles
underlying the behaviour that distinguishes men from women, etc.
Other
tales are the tall tales which embody a mode of discourse that
Houston Baker calls ‘mythomania’ and which he defines as a
compulsion to embroider the truth, to exaggerate or to tell lies
(Baker,74). In tall tales there is contest in hyperbole which
continues until somebody reaches a climax of exaggeration.
Another
verbal practice, unique in the Afro-American oral tradition is
signifying. Forms of signification are sounding and playing the
dozens. Both forms are speech acts defined as ritual and artistic
insult. Moreover, they are instances of verbal ingenuity rather than
an attempt to perpetuate enmity or hostility. The listener, for
instance, is not supposed to take offence when the
relatives-primarily the mother-are abased, but participates in the
verbal contest, while the signifier is projected to a cultural hero[3].
The
expected response to a ritual insult is laughter which reminds us of
Bakhtin who perceives laughter as ‘a vital factor in laying down
that pre-requisite for fearlessness without which it would be
impossible to approach the world realistically’[4]. Through laughter
Black people managed to cope with painful experiences, such as
slavery and exploitation, but also with transcendental concerns, such
as the fear of divine justice. In the last case, oral art reaches its
climax in the prayer where the Afro-American preacher becomes the
paradigm of the oral artist as he resorts to his own linguistic
code-that is dialect-to invoke religious images.
The
above mentioned manifestations of orality, songs and sermons
included, are marked by a common pattern which defines the mode of
communication. This communication process, which is called
call-and-response, keeps the channel of communication open and
consolidates the relationships of the community. Moreover, the
primacy of the spoken word is foregrounded since the continuous
exchange of tales, or even insults, creates an atmosphere of intimacy
among the performers.
Mules
and Men is the best reflection of Afro-American reality because
life and imagination are not regulated by external factors. Using her
anthropological knowledge, Hurston explores the variety of oral modes
found in Afro-American oral tradition, placing special emphasis upon
language. As Gates remarks in praising her anthropological
contribution, in Hurston voice does not only connote point of view,
but also ‘the linguistic presence of a literary tradition that
exists for us as a written text’ (Gates,181). Therefore, the
folktales with their vivid descriptions of settings, skilful
delineation of characters, unusual imagery derived from nature and
powerful dramatic effect, open new possibilities for literary
explorations. Furthermore, dialect becomes a major trope for Hurston
and as a significant discursive element it establishes her as a
modernist narrator. The unreflective and spontaneous element of folk
art through dialect usage is captured by Hurston in her masterpiece
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).
In
Their Eyes Were Watching God Hurston probes into the
relationships of the Eatonville community as a novelist. Through her
ability to combine linguistic and literary structures, she
consolidates her position as a modernist narrator by resorting to a
very elaborate narrative strategy which is called free indirect
discourse and which projects a divided narrative consciousness
through constant switching of codes between standardised literary
language and dialect. Accordingly, due to the emphasis on the spoken
word, the novel establishes itself as what Gates calls a multi-vocal
speakerly text.
While
the novel is a romance where men function as a kind of symbolic
manifestation in Janie’s -the protagonist’s- development, Hurston’s
command of black orality enables her to construct a book that is not
only shaped around the love theme, but also around Janie’s progress
towards self-awareness and articulation of voice. This process
towards articulation and externalisation of feeling is pertinent to
the narrative form of the novel, manifested through a framing voice,
that of the omniscient narrator, and also a very strong sense of the
character being involved in the story-telling. Gates comments upon
this as follows:
As
the protagonist approaches self-consciousness, [however], not
only does the text use free indirect discourse to represent her [Janie’s] development, but the diction of the black character’s discourse
comes to inform the diction of the voice of the narrative commentary
such that, in several passages, it is extraordinarily difficult
to distinguish the narrator’s voice from the
protagonist’s (Gates,191).
The
narrator does not only use free indirect discourse to represent
Janie’s development, but also to signify the waning of other
characters’ power. Moreover, this method of discourse is not only
displayed through the diction; sometimes it is also indicated
typographically -as with the absence of quotation marks otherwise used
to signal first-person narration- or grammatically through change of
aspect or through shift from third to first person pronouns, from
past to present tense, etc.
The
novel is structured like a three-act play with each act built around
Janie’s relationship with a particular man-Logan Killicks, Joe
Starks and Vergible ‘Tea Cake’. In the opening passage the
narrative voice dominates the text since the characters have not yet
reached their articulateness:
Ships
at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in
with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out
of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in
resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of
men.
Now,
women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and
remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the
truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.
So
the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying
the dead. (Their Eyes,9).
From
the very beginning, men and women are placed in different positions
according to their relation with Time. Men’s dreams can be favoured
or not favoured by time. All they have to do is watch patiently.
Women have to live their dreams. Then the detached, abstract and
removed narrative voice narrows down and places Janie in this network
of relationships.
Since
the narrative is related in retrospect, the reader is drawn backwards
into it in order to comprehend the validity of the novel’s opening
statement. We soon realise that Janie is not aware of that universal
truth at the early stages of her life. Thus she does not respond to
this call of the narrator’s statement. The knowledge that a woman’s
dreams cannot be materialised with the passage of time comes with the
failure of her first marriage. Janie is defeated emotionally, since
she fails to fulfil her sensual expectations and, moreover, she is
defeated verbally by Logan Killicks since she does not confront his
authoritative voice but instead escapes with Joe Starks.
Although
initially in the new relationship Janie returns to her old florid
childhood dreams and thoughts, and is determined to find words to
externalise them, we soon realise that she is subjected to Joe’s
intentions to objectify her and deprive her of her voice. The
omniscient narrator signals Joe’s intentions by a switch to dialect
not foregrounded by quotation marks:
Joe
Starks was the name, yeah Joe Starks from in and through Georgy… He
had always wanted to be a big voice, but de white folks had all de
sayso where
he come from and everywhere else, exceptin’ dis place dat colored folks
was buildin’ theirselves. Dat was right too. De man dat built
things oughta
boss it (Their Eyes,47-48).
The
passage is the first instance where the narrator’s and a
character’s voice interpenetrate so clearly, to the point where
they become almost indistinguishable. Joe calls for a big voice and
the narrator responds by allowing him to displace standard language
from the narrative commentary.
As
the novel proceeds, Janie’s weakness and her lack of voice are
indicated through her exclusion from culturally specific rituals like
lies, woofing, playing the dozens, etc. Instead her life time and
space are marked by Joe’s store which becomes a metonymy for her
physical, emotional and verbal suppression.
Ironically
enough, an incident in this store marks the beginning of Janie’s
acquisition of voice. Joe’s humiliating remark when Janie cannot
cut the tobacco properly initiates her into female signification. It
is the first time Janie responds forcefully to Joe’s negative calls
by uttering: ‘Talkin’ ‘bout me lookin’ old! When you pull
down yo’ britches, you look lak de change uh life’ (Their
Eyes,123). Janie is ‘playin’ de dozens’ and she receives the
right response from the community which is laughter. What
distinguishes the incident from communal practices, though, is that
rather than trying to establish community relationships, Janie states
her autonomous and superior position, which comes with the ability to
express the awareness of her womanhood.
Along
with Janie’s authorisation comes Joe’s gradual loss of voice.
When Joe was first introduced in the text, the narrator was absorbed
in his diction by integrating his discourse. After the store incident
and his illness which follows it, dialect features are limited to the
minimum. The narrator chooses not to integrate his language in the
narrative commentary in order to underscore Janie’s linguistic and
emotional liberation which will lead us to her third partner, that is
Tea Cake.
The
appearance of Tea Cake in the life of Janie is a further opportunity
to evince the novel’s orality. Janie’s desire to acquire her
voice through participation in culture can be fully realised in the
face of Tea Cake who seems to be the embodiment of the Afro-American
cultural spirit, often appearing as a ‘blues’ man. Thus, on
meeting him, Janie repeats a phrase that was previously included in
the narrative commentary: ‘So in the beginnin’ new thoughts had
to be thought and new words said… He [Tea Cake] done taught me de
maiden language all over’ (Their Eyes,173). Janie has reached the
state where what was previously reported through the narrator is now
articulated in her own words. Janie’s search for new words to
externalise her new thoughts is facilitated by Tea Cake who has
taught her the ‘maiden language’ -a language that is connected
with her own gender and not defined by male discourse- rather than
impose upon her a symbolic order.
With
Tea Cake’s acceptance of Janie as a fully-integrated member of the
community, comes her development into a speaking subject. This is
demonstrated through various passages which are narrated in the light
of folklore. In the stories that are incorporated in the narrative
the narrator still switches from standard language to folk idiom
while Janie’s language constantly becomes more poetic. Janie’s
conclusive linguistic emancipation, though, comes with Tea Cake’s
death after the hurricane incident which reinforces the palpability
of oral narrative composition. Because of Tea Cake’s death, Janie
returns to Eatonville, tells her story to her friend Phoeby and
establishes herself as a story-teller, something which has validated
her life all along. Janie’s call for acceptance as an articulate
porch-talker is recognised by Phoeby who responds positively as Janie
finishes her story: ‘Ah done growed ten feet higher from jus’
listenin’ tuh you, Janie’ (Their Eyes,284). Phoeby is the eager
audience that responds to Janie’s desire for community. Moreover,
Janie and the narrator establish their own private community
foregrounded through free indirect discourse.
In
Their Eyes Were Watching God the narrator engages in free
indirect discourse to comment upon power relations. Therefore, the
narrative commentary integrates the dialectal language of strong
voices, whereas it tries to preserve narration in standardised
language in instances where control over another character is not
significant, primarily with regard to Janie’s relation with Tea
Cake. Moreover, the constant vacillation between the two most opposed
linguistic codes can be seen as a manifestation of the narrator’s
involvement in the Afro-American call-and-response pattern. Since the
narrative is related in retrospect, the narrator responds to Janie’s
call to be acknowledged as a story-teller.
One
could argue that there is something more profound in Hurston’s
approach rather than a mere caprice to appear as ‘uncanonical’
with respect to dominant black intellectuals such as Du Bois or
Locke. Through the ‘spy-glass of Anthropology’ and her inclusion
in the ‘inner circle’ of the community, Hurston discovered the
real value of the material provided by her own people. Moreover, this
experience allowed her to experiment with voices in Their Eyes Were
Watching God.
Hurston’s
ambition to bridge the oral and the literary, inherently different
intellectual realms, and her belief in genuine ‘raw’ Negro
material is enshrined in the following paragraph from her
autobiography Dust Tracks On a Road (1942):
My
sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my
family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the Universe.
When I see what we really are like, I know that God is too great an
artist for we folks on my side of the creek to be all of His best
works. Some of His finest touches are among us, without doubt, but
some more of His masterpieces are among those folks who live over the
creek (Dust Tracks,281).
Hurston
included the call -and -response pattern in her attitude towards
life, too. Therefore, she responded to the call she received from
‘over the creek’, the illiterate black people, although this
sometimes implied friction with the people from her ‘side of the
creek’[5], the representatives of the better-thinking Negro. With her
loss of difference, Hurston explored and clarified the artistic
quality inherent in oral forms, utilised alternative possibilities
for narration offered through them and vindicated herself as a
modernist narrator.
Maria Emmanouilidou
*Emmanouelidou, M. (1997), 'Voice and Narrative: Zora Neale Hurston's Materialisation of Afro-American Oral Tradition & Dialect as Literary References', in Georgoudaki Ekaterini and Pastourmatzi Domna (eds), Women, Creators of Culture (171-180) Thessaloniki: Hellenic Association of American Studies.
^Hurston's nonfiction book entitled Barracoon (The Story of the Last "Black Cargo") was published posthumously in 2018.
NOTES
About
the middle of the last century and the first decades of the
twentieth century African culture was examined by two
anthropological trends. The evolutionists, for example Morgan, Tylor
or Frazer, expressed more or less an ethnocentric attitude.
According to the evolutionists, Europe was considered the dominant
civilised culture (and by extension America), while primitive
cultures followed a parallel pattern of development, aiming at
reaching the upper strata of cultural hierarchy. Thus, instead of
concentrating on the productions of particular cultures, the
evolutionists sought to identify and classify the various stages of
transition from the primitive to the civilised culture. The
counter-argument came from the side of the diffusionists. Franz Boas
and his followers -including M.J.Herskovits and W. Bascom- insisted on
the exploration of cultural development by means of independent
studies, rather than maintain the belief in the existence of a
single and hierarchical culture. For more information see Franz
Boas, Anthropology and Modern Life (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Press,1962), Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1970), E.B.Tylor, The Origins of Culture
(New York, 1958).
With
regard to the animal trickster tales some folklorists associate the
Brer Rabbit tales with an African origin. After an extensive study
of Hausa and Fulani folk tales in Nigeria, H.A.S. Johnson remarked
in 1966 on the parallel plots of some Hausa stories with those found
in at least thirteen of the Uncle Remus stories. Johnson also
pointed out that Brer Rabbit undoubtedly descended from the hare of
African folk tales. In the animal trickster tales one animal
outsmarts the other, thus perpetuating an eternal enmity. The
hierarchy established in the animal kingdom is based upon intellect
rather than physical power. Human trickster tales were adopted to
modify stereotypes. According to white people’s standards, ‘John’ or ‘Jack’ becomes a paradigm for the category ‘servile,
docile black servant with the meanest intelligence’. In the
stories it seems that John consciously projects this image so as to
actually outsmart his master who takes for granted that his servant
is foolish and easy to be taken advantage of. See Janheinz Jahn,
Muntu: An Outline of the New African Culture (New York: Grove Press,
Inc., 1961) and Eileen Julien, African Novels and the Question of
Orality (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1992).
The
aim of signifying is not always to humiliate the listener. Woofing
is another form of signifying and can be defined as culturally
specific wooing.
Mikhail
Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, translated by Caryl Emerson and
Michael Holquist, and edited by Michael Holquist (Austin,1981),
p.23. Quoted in Eileen Julien, op.cit., p.128.
Representatives
of the ‘better-thinking Negro’ believed that dialect usage
perpetuated the minstrel tradition. Alain Locke, for instance,
undervalued the literary validity of Their Eyes Were Watching God by
calling it ‘folklore fiction at its best’, thus implying a
limitation in the genre. As an answer to the condescending and
patronising attitude of Locke, Hurston responded that ‘To his
discomfort I must say that those lines came out of my own head’.
In Robert E. Hemenway, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1980), p. 242.
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