Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Special Commissioned Essay on African-American Folklore and Literature, Barbara J. Wilcots - African-American Folk Tradition

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AFRICAN-AMERICAN FOLK TRADITION

Barbara J. Wilcots (essay date 2002)

SOURCE: “An Analysis of African-American Folklore and Literature.” In Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, vol. 126, edited by Linda Pavlovski. Farmington Hills, Mich.: The Gale Group, 2002.

[In the following original essay, Wilcots provides an overview of African-American folklore and literature, focusing on its history, representative writers, significant works, and critical response.]

THE AFRICAN ORIGINS OF NEGRO FOLK CULTURE

Modern African peoples comprise more than eight hundred distinct ethnic and linguistic groups, many dating back thousands of years, and each with its own religious system and cultural heritage.¹ Historians estimate that 11.7 million Africans,² representing more than two hundred ethnic groups from Central and West Africa, were enslaved in the New World.³ Enslaved Africans brought with them a...

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1. Introduction
2. African-American Folk Tradition
3. Representative Writers
4. Hallmark Works
5. The Study Of African-American Literature And Folklore
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright

1. African-American Literature