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How did Zora Neale Hurston use Southern Black folklore in Their Eyes Were Watching God?
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Harlem Renaissance
Dust jacket designed by the Mexican illustrator and writer Miguel Covarrubias for Langston Hughes's The Weary Blues (1926), a book of experimental poetry.
In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston integrates Southern Black folklore to elevate the African American experience through a unique literary voice. Drawing on her background as an anthropologist and her fieldwork for the anthology Mules and Men, she employs several key techniques:12
- Vernacular and Folk Speech: Hurston writes dialogue in African American dialect, utilizing the rich, metaphorical language she encountered in rural Southern communities. This speech serves as a source of power and characterization, allowing the protagonist, Janie Crawford, to express her psychological growth and agency.12
- Oral Tradition: The novel functions as a communal act of storytelling. By using a frame narrative where Janie recounts her life to her friend Pheoby, Hurston honors the oral tradition of Black storytelling, emphasizing the importance of shared narratives.1
- Narrative Style: Hurston blends this colloquial folk voice with a more standard literary prose through free indirect discourse. This technique allows her to represent Janie’s consciousness while maintaining the authenticity of the folk motifs and vernacular language.2
Through these methods, Hurston moved beyond the "propaganda of racial uplift" common in other Harlem Renaissance fiction, instead offering a nuanced, psychologically complex portrayal of Black Southern life.12