O presente trabalho de doutorado focaliza as construções de feminilidade negra no conto não publicado \"Under The Bridge\", de Zora Neale Hurston assim como os já publicados \"Sweat\", \"Spunk\" e \"The Gilded Six-Bits\" em comparação com \"Roselily\", \"Really, Doesn\'t Crime Pay?\", \"Coming Apart\" e \"Porn\", da autora contemporânea Alice Walker. Ao supor que Alice Walker \'significa\' ou \'relê\' o trabalho de Hurston, que escreveu durante a época da Renascença no Harlem, a tese tem como objetivo investigar os elos de ligação entre as duas escritoras, focalizando a maneira pela qual suas protagonistas femininas contestam ou aceitam os parâmetros determinantes do \"verdadeiro culto de feminilidade\". Conclui-se que a apresentação das personagens femininas pelas escritoras negras simbolicamente questiona a representação da sexualidade e racismo como uma tentativa de tornar visível o processo de libertação das amarras da sociedade americana no momento de cada produção literária, contribuindo desse modo para o desenvolvimento da crítica literária negra. Na introdução desse trabalho, um panorama sobre o desenvolvimento da escrita por mulheres negras é apresentado, considerando-se leitores não pertencentes ao contexto cultural norte-americano, especialmente pelo fato da tese ser desenvolvida no Brasil. Portanto, essa seção focaliza alguns aspectos sobre a vida de Zora Neale Hurston e Alice Walker, assim como os fatores históricos, sociais e ideológicos que influenciaram a formação dessas autoras. No primeiro capítulo, dedicado à análise dos contos de Hurston, é essencial entender como a violência psicológica cometida contra as personagens femininas por seus parceiros é denunciada no gênero do conto, já que a tradicional dicotomia dominação masculina e subordinação feminina é perpetuada. Embora Hurston não desenvolva protagonistas autônomas e independentes, a escritora outorga o poder a essas personagens por meio da ligação com as raízes culturais. O capítulo divide-se em três momentos: o espaço do lar nas relações matrimoniais, o espaço cósmico/ simbólico na constituição das personagens e o espaço da linguagem no uso do inglês negro vernacular como meio de afirmação. O segundo capítulo traz a análise dos contos de Alice Walker como \"Roselily\" e \"Really, Doesn\'t Crime Pay? , inseridos na coletânea In Love & Trouble- Stories of Black Women e \"Coming Apart\" e \"Porn\", da coletânea You Can\'t Keep a Good Woman Down. O capítulo demonstra a agência das protagonistas e a maneira pela qual as opressões sofridas por instituições como a família, o casamento, os meios de comunicação por meio das imagens de revistas pornográficas e os estereótipos criados pela tradição branca limitam as possibilidades da agência feminina. Dessa forma, a questão da agência mostra-se relacionada às identidades negociadas a partir do momento em que as normas de feminilidade são (des) construídas. Diferentemente do primeiro capítulo em que as vozes de Vangie, Delia Jones, Lena e Missie May se inter-cruzam na análise, optou-se aqui por uma divisão temática. Logo, \"Papéis de Gênero no Espaço das Relações Matrimoniais\" e \"Questionando Identidades\" referem-se aos contos \"Roselily\" e \"Really, Doesn\'t Crime Pay?\" Os contos que abordam a questão da pornografia, \"Coming Apart\" e \"Porn\", são trabalhados nos itens: \"Reificação das Mulheres\", \"O Espaço Pornográfico\" e \"Tornando-se Sujeitos\" No terceiro capítulo verificam-se as diferenças de agência feminina em resposta aos parâmetros de feminilidade negra assim como analisam-se as estratégias narrativas usadas por ambas escritoras. De início, os fundamentos teóricos de Harold Bloom sobre a \'angústia da influência\' e os escritos feministas sobre a tradição literária das mulheres a partir do século XIX abrem caminhos para o trabalho crítico de \"significação\" proposto por Henry Louis Gates. No contexto negro, significar sugere a repetição do passado, mas com a inserção de novos elementos. Com base nessa teoria, o capítulo estabelece Hurston como a pioneira no desenvolvimento da tradição da escrita negra feminina ao relacioná-la com sua contemporânea Alice Walker. Ao utilizar teorias do multiculturalismo crítico propostas por Gates e Homi Bhabha e do dialogismo de Mikhail Bakhtin, o capítulo considera a desconstrução do signo negro, a transformação dos sujeitos da cultura no processo de (não) desestabilização dos papéis de feminilidade negra e propõe uma classificação acerca dos tipos de agência segundo os postulados de lingüistas-antropólogos. No início desse capítulo, assim como nos anteriores, um breve resumo dos principais tópicos a serem abordados é apresentado bem como uma conclusão parcial. Em considerações finais, as principais questões suscitadas no decorrer do trabalho são retomadas. O processo de significação em que Walker revisita a obra de Hurston aponta para as distintas caracterizações de suas respectivas personagens no gênero de contos. Nesse sentido, é possível pensar na multiplicidade de representações da mulher negra e suas especificidade no processo de libertação das amarras opressoras da sociedade excludente. / This doctoral research analyzes from a Brazilian perspective the constructions of black womanhood in Zora Neale Hurston\'s unpublished short-story \"Under the Bridge\" and published short stories \"Sweat\", \"Spunk\", and \"The Gilded Six-Bits\". The Hurston stories are compared to \"Roselily\", \"Really, Doesn\'t Crime Pay?\", \"Coming Apart\" and \"Porn\", written by the contemporary author Alice Walker. Taking as a starting point that Alice Walker\'s narratives \'signify\' on the work of Hurston, who wrote during The Harlem Renaissance (1920), this thesis aims to investigate the threads that connect both writers by focusing on the ways in which their female protagonists question or accept the parameters of \"the cult of true womanhood\". The conclusion shows that the portrayal of black women characters symbolically questions representations of sexuality and racism in an attempt to make visible the process of liberation from the constraints of American society at the time of each author\'s literary production. Thus the authors contribute to the development of black literary criticism as well as to the tradition of black women writers.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

La thèse s’attache à démontrer comment l’utilisation du folklore, en tant que discipline et que matériau, agit de façon subversive dans les travaux de Zora Neale Hurston et Toni Morrison. Un questionnement autour du folklore (nature et origine des objets d’étude, délimitation et positionnement de la discipline) donne un nouvel éclairage sur des problématiques porteuses dans le domaine littéraire, comme la définition des identités ou la mise en place des relations de pouvoir. Une approche transdisciplinaire permet, en plus de convoquer différents champs du savoir, d’observer de quelle manière ils peuvent s’infléchir entre eux. Par son double statut d’anthropologue et d’auteure de fiction, Hurston incarne une relation d’interdépendance et de dialogue entre matériau littéraire et folklorique. Son œuvre polymorphe, qui entremêle fiction et folklore, langue vernaculaire et écriture poétique, met en relief des enjeux épistémologiques, politiques et littéraires centraux dans l’œuvre de Morrison et permettent de mieux comprendre sa construction d’un discours orienté vers la pluralité et la performance. L’oralité, dans sa relation avec la littérature, constitue le point d’entrée de la recherche. La dynamique de variation, centrale à toute étude de la tradition orale est largement utilisée dans ces œuvres et va dans le sens d’une esthétique de la plasticité et de la polyphonie. La seconde partie s’intéresse au surnaturel et à la croyance qui, dans leur prise en charge, fonctionnent comme outil de subversion par la revalorisation des « savoirs discrédités ». Le positionnement de Hurston dans l’évolution du folklore en tant que discipline encourage à reconsidérer l’appellation de réalisme magique pour les romans de Morrison. Enfin, la mise en place d’un système d’interprétations alternatives et de sous-textes concurrents, en particulier en relation à la religion et aux contes, promeut la pluralité des possibilités herméneutiques qui agit pour la réhabilitation de discours minorés par des discriminations de classe, de race, de genre et de statut institutionnel. / The present work seeks to demonstrate how the use of folklore, both as a discipline and as objects, leads to subversion in the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. A questioning of folklore (nature and origin of the items, definition of the discipline) sheds new light on literary issues such as identity formation and assignation or power relationships. In a transdiciplinary approach that goes beyond using resources from separate fields, this study aims at assessing how much they modify one another. Because she was both an anthropologist and a fiction writer, Hurston embodies the interaction between literary and folkloric materials. Her polymorphic work blends fiction with folklore and vernacular with poetic language. The epistemological, political and literary issues it reveals are crucial to Morrison’s writing and allow a better understanding of her crafting of a discourse oriented towards plurality and performance. The study of the interplay between orality and literature shows that variation, central to the oral tradition, infuses the corpus, promoting plurality and polyphony. The second part focuses on beliefs and the supernatural: their endorsement challenges a hierarchical order by giving value back to « discredited knowledge. » Hurston’s positioning within folklore as a discipline and its evolution leads to a reexamination of the concept of « magical realism » used for Morrison’s novels. Finally, a system of alternate interpretation and competing subtexts, especially concerning religion and folktales, supports multiplicity in the interpretative possibilities and enables the rehabilitation of forms of discourse depreciated because of social, racial, gender and institutional discriminations.

This project focuses on African American and Afro- Hispanic literature and folklore. Specifically, I employ Fernando Ortiz’s theory of transculturation. Ortiz makes the case that a new Afro- Cuban identity is created with the intermingling of African, Spanish and native inhabitants of Cuba. Using Ortiz’s critical framework as the foundation of my study, I undertake a new critique of Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal of African American identity. Analyzing Hurston’s work through the model of transculturation, I examine the parallel between her work and that of Lydia Cabrera, a Cuban ethnographer whose work represents Afro-Cuban identity as a transcultural one. Establishing this comparison, I reflect on the similarities and differences among their strategies of representing Transculturation in African- based identities. I look at their works from a womanist lens to analyze how their female anthropologist status influenced their folkloric portrayals and how they enacted a political agenda that emphasized female agency. I also analyze the oral aesthetic of their texts; in my opinion, Hurston and Cabrera reproductions of the spoken are ways to represent transcultural dialogue. Finally I compare their ethnographic studies of the African- based spiritual systems of Santeria and Voodoo.

Thèses (M.A.)--Université de Sherbrooke (Canada), 1999. / Titre de l'écran-titre (visionné le 20 juin 2006). Publié aussi en version papier.

Zora Neale Hurston’s literature involves dance and performance. What makes this a viable topic of inquiry is her texts often exhibit the performative, whether portraying culture or using dance and associated folk rituals to create complex meaning. Hurston’s use of black vernacular and storytelling evokes lyrical expression in "Their Eyes Were Watching God." African and Caribbean Diasporas in Hurston’s literature reflects primitive dance performances and folklore. This novel requires lyrical analysis. The storytelling feature of performance arts and reclamations of the body are present in Hurston’s text. In recent academic settings, the body has come to occupy a crucial place in literary and cultural texts and criticism. Hurston’s versatile material and anthropology techniques are instrumental in reshaping dance history. A new archetype for theorizing the body has surfaced, where the body of text is performance and lyrical expression.

This paper gives critical attention to the nature versus caution porch conversation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, arguing that this is a legitimate addition to the anthropological discussion of nature versus culture. Addressing literary critics as well as scholars of the environmental humanities and of multispecies studies, I argue that Hurston's nature-caution discussion is a helpful epistemology which Hurston employs throughout her novel to suggest a single, unified way of understanding the human and nonhuman.

This thesis involves a theoretical study of the dynamics of cultural interaction as represented in Ngugi wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat, Zora Neale Hurston's Jonah's Gourd Vine and Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Ema Brodber's Myal. Specifically, it considers the role that a dialogue between critical theory (post-colonial and feminist) and literary practice can play in the evaluation of two distinct conceptions of cultural difference: identity politics, understood as positing an essential binaristic difference between an ethnic or gendered Self and Other, and hybridity theory, which conceives of Self and Other as mutually constitutive and inescapably interconnected. While this thesis demonstrates some of the ways in which hybridity theory can revise and expand contemporary critical readings of the novels under study, it also demonstrates how literature can problematize the universalizing claims of both hybridity theory and identity politics, thus stressing the importance of sociohistorical and literary/narrative contexts to the evaluation of strategies of resistance to colonial and/or patriarchal regimes. After an introductory chapter dealing with questions of theory, three subsequent chapters discuss themes of hybridity and cultural separatism in the novels by Ngugi, Hurston, and Brodber, respectively. Each of these latter chapters involves a detailed analysis of the colonial and/or patriarchal discourses represented in the particular novel or novels under study. These analyses include discussions of some of the ways in which dominant discourses attempt to co-opt cultural difference and impede equitable intercultural hybridizing exchange by polarizing Self and Other in a binaristic economy. Each chapter also considers the presence of internal contradictions in dominant discourses and the implications of such contradictions for a revolutionary politics. On the basis of these discussions, this thesis considers the relative efficacy of hybridity and identity politics as strategies of resistance, demonstrating that different contexts call for different approaches to revolutionary theory and practice. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Since the 75th anniversary of the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane in 2003, a growing number of journalists and historians writing about the disaster have incorporated Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God as part of the official historical record of the hurricane. These writers often border on depicting Their Eyes as the authentic experience of black migrant workers impacted by the hurricane and subsequent flood. Within the novel itself, however, Hurston theorizes on the potential epistemic violence that occurs when a piece of evidence—a photograph, fallen body, or verbal artifact—is used to judge a person. Without a person's ability to use self-representation to give an "understandin'" (7) to go along with the evidence, snapshots or textual evidence threaten to violently separate people from their prior knowledge of themselves. By offering the historical context of photographs of African Americans in the Post-Reconstruction South, I argue that Janie experiences this epistemic violence as a young girl when seeing a photograph of herself initiates her into the racial hierarchy of the South. A few decades later, while on trial for shooting her husband Tea Cake, Janie again faces epistemic violence when the evidence of Tea Cake's body is used to judge her and her marriage; however, by giving an understandin' to go along with the evidence through self-representation, Janie is able to clarify that which other forms of evidence distort and is able to go free. Modern texts appropriating Their Eyes run the risk of enacting epistemic violence on the victims of the hurricane, the novel, and history itself when they present the novel as the complete or authentic perspective of the migrant workers in the hurricane. By properly situating the novel as a historical text that offers a particular narrative of the hurricane rather than the complete or authentic experience of the victims, modern writers can honor Hurston's literary achievement without robbing the actual victims of the hurricane of their voice.

The purpose of this thesis is to showcase the importance of God-inspired Theatre and to manifest the transformative effects of living in accordance to the Word of God. In order to share my vision for theatre such as this, I will examine the biblical elements in Zora Neale Hurston's short story Sweat (1926). I will write a stage adaptation of the story, while placing emphasis on the biblical lessons that can be used for God-inspired Theatre. When viewing the stage adaptation based on Sweat, the audience members will understand how God-inspired Theatre aims to help members of society utilize their gifts and abilities to assist others in achieving spiritual stability. The members of the audience will also be informed of my vision to use this piece to inspire others to embrace cultural awareness and sensitivity. This is my vision--helping others to walk in their God-ordained destiny. With this in mind, I am using Sweat as a proposed play because it is closely related to the creation account as recorded in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. In this play, Adam and Eve are replaced with the characters Sykes and Delia Jones. The creation account is a very influential testimony because it is known throughout humanity. Its popularity is due to the fact that the Old Testament is the commencement of the Christian Bible. For those of the Jewish faith, the collection encompasses the Torah, the first five books of the bible--the law for everyday living-- as well as the history of God's promise to them. For Christians, the Old Testament is just as sacred, but they view its religious meaning as incomplete without the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ detailed in the New Testament. Also, Muslims trace their religious roots to some of the figures in the Old Testament although they deny the religious significance of the work as a whole. In essence, the Old Testament is crucial to Western Civilization. This is why Sweat is so powerful. It takes an extremely familiar testimony and shares pertinent messages that help people to become productive members of society. In order to show how effective Sweat is in helping others to live spirit-filled lives, I will use creative staging that will place the characters in the personal space of the audience members. I will achieve this by: having the actors enter and exit from the audience; allowing certain scenes to take place within the audience; and having the actors deliver some lines to various audience members. I feel that by making the audience a part of the production, it will cause them to see that they are not any different from the characters in the play. At some point in their lives, theatergoers have encountered--or been intimate with--an Adam, an Eve, a Sykes or a Delia. This will cause them to not see Sweat as just a play, but as a valuable life lesson, triggering self-examination and initiating renovated thinking that helps people to become culturally aware and spiritually sound. It is imperative that the biblical messages in Sweat are conspicuous. Whereas the narrator normally describes Delia's facial expression or feelings, I plan to write in scenes where her thoughts are audible. Some of her thoughts will include moments when she is praising and worshipping God. This is apparent because she starts to emerge as a woman of strength as the story progresses. Her relationship with God is cultivated on a daily basis. This is why she is able to tolerate her husband's foolishness. Her husband, Sykes, does not commune with God. To demonstrate his lack of communion with God, I will stage him being resistant to her times of worship--as he normally is according to the narrator. Clearly, the marriage is unbalanced. One partner is trying to please God, and the other is trying to please self. This is not how God intended marriage to be. In the New Testament Book First Peter, it states in the third chapter and seventh verse "husbands are to dwell with them in understanding, giving honor to the wife... being heirs together of the grace of life." Showing the burdensome consequences of destructing God's original design will pull on the hearts of audience members because they have encountered or known someone who is presently dealing with the consequences of this disobedient act. I will further reiterate the need for living a spirit-filled life by using costumes, scenic devices, and lighting to convey the godly and ungodly character traits that are embodied within the story. Through the use of colors and patterns, I will project the internal state of the character as in relation to God's instructions. I will work with a lighting designer in order to help convey the moods of the various scenes. The lighting techniques we choose will help to establish the thoughts and personalities of the characters. These feelings will transcend the minds of the audience and cause them to take the biblical messages into very deep consideration. The actors are the final ingredients in making Sweat an awe-inspiring, informative piece. Words are what they are, what one perceives them to be, while on paper. It is the job of the actor to give life to these words, cause them to live in the atmosphere, and to make the character come alive. Until the actor embodies the very heart of a character, the message in God-inspired Theatre will not be able to come forth and propel audience members to have a spiritual awakening. This is why people cannot just read Sweat. They must see the trials and journeys in order to receive life-changing revelations from the testimonies within the play.