Global Grapevine. We finish out the semester with a two-pronged “Think global—Act Local” approach. After plunging deep into the American South, we skip over to Africa to look at more folktales of creation and transformation and to observe the emergence of the novel in Africa. Finally, we head back home to Arkansas. Choose one of the following topics:
A. Cinderella Internationale: Compare/contrast the Chinese, African, and Native American “Cinderella” tales or the French, German, and British “Cinderella” tales. What do the similarities lead us to conclude about the fundamentals of storytelling? What do the differences tell us about the individual cultures and societies that produced the tales?
B. The Prince and the Playboy: Compare and contrast the African “Cinderella” with Tutuola’s Palm-Wine Tapster. See what you can learn about the regions and people that produced these two works.
C. Stephen Foster’s Songbook: Analyze the ways in which songs such as “Dixie,” “Old Folks at Home,” and “Camptown Races” romanticize and mythologize the South yet at the same time present a distorted picture.
Additional sources and avenues of inquiry:
Bruno Bettelheim, Uses of Enchantment
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale
Stith Thompson, “Universality of the Folktale”
Catherine Orenstein, Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked