Zora Neale Hurston: Black Novelist and Folklorist

FAIN: RO-11955-73

University of Kentucky Research Foundation (Lexington, KY 40506-0004)
Robert Hemenway (Project Director: September 1974 to present)

Request funds for 1) to spend Fall, 1974 at the Folklore Institute of Indiana University completing research for 4 of the 8 chapters of a major literary biography of Zora Neale Hurston, the Black novelist and folklorist. The nature of the research and subsequent writing will concentrate on 1) an exploration of the problem of acceptance of Black American folklore and how the public's reluctance to accept was a discouraging influence on Hurston's career; the special function of Afro-Caribbean folklore in Hurston's work; the function of the Moses legend in Afro-American folklore and Hurston's use of it.