| This dissertation focuses on oral traditions, specifically trickster tales, in the Creole-speaking islands of Guadeloupe and the South Carolina Sea Islands. The two sites are similar in that they share a similar Central African cultural heritage, creolized languages, French Creole and Gullah respectively, and separation from mainland culture that insulated them from outside influences. These factors produced similar contexts in which to study the continuing vitality of African oral traditions. Moreover, the recent increase in tourism and migration from both sites allowed me to test my hypothesis that these forces negatively affected the use of creolized language and, thus, orality.; My study also centers on the hidden political polemics encoded in the tales' texts and how each storyteller's sociopolitical agenda influences how they manipulate them. The tale and its teller must necessarily function together to produce any resistant strategy in their performance. I have relied on community evaluations and responses to the tales, historical and personal evidence, and post-colonial and African American feminist theory to provide me reading strategies to understand the messages of the tales.; The dissertation is divided into chapters based on three characters: Br'er Rabbit, the Signifying Monkey, and the human Character John. Their French Creole equivalents are Conpe Lapin, Conpe Makak, and Ti-Jean. In addition, I examine how African American women are represented in the folktales, looking specifically at the "Tar Baby" tale. Furthermore, by considering the contemporary usage of folk characters, such as Br'er Rabbit and the Signifying Monkey, I examine the importance of communal reinterpretations of trickster behavior in black popular culture, for example, in literature and film. |
