The "I-Narrative" and Southern Folk Characters

"The I-Narrative," or simply the first-person narrative, can be thought of as a story that is written primarily from the first-person perspective. The author refers to him- or herself as "I" throughout. However, it may not be as simple to define as that.

Zora Hurston, whose autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road, was written under pressure by her publishers. As her popularity began to wane, Hurston was urged to create an autobiography to stimulate interest in her life and work. The author and folklorist was a very private person (despite her larger-than-life persona and impulse to perform), the details of her private life were her own. Therefore, most scholars of her work believe that much of the content of Dust Tracks is fictionalized. 

from: zoranealehurston.com

Hurston's strategy in her own autobiography can be understood in some ways as part of the author's natural impulse to "adorn" or to "embellish" her life's story. In this way, Hurston's life story becomes absorbed as another item the author's many fictive works, leaving the "true Zora" a mystery and her persona just another fictional character. However, the impulse to reconstruct the self through the I-Narrative may be more of a means to discover the true self, after all. Don Nix defines the dual purpose of the "I Narrative" in this way:

In your own I-narratives, what might be your purpose? To create a persona endowed with all the positive traits that you find honorable or admirable--or would it be more of a soul-seeking project?

The I-Narrative that Hurston offers us belongs strictly to the genre of literature. However, other southern characters are presented and maintained through folklore. In order to fully appreciate how these characters come to life, there are some terms you should be familiar with:

Eye Dialect: Often storytellers (whether oral or textual), use eye dialect to mimic the sounds of their characters' dialects. Dialect--the versionof a spoken language a person uses--can index their cultural, socio-economic, educational, and regional backgrounds. Dialect tells us a lot about a person, and that person's use of dialect tells us a lot about the region he or she comes from. 

Authors Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page are two southern writers from the 19th century. Page was an attorney who wrote short stories of the Old South, while Harris transcribed tales he heard from African American slaves while he served as an apprentice on a plantation in Georgia. As you read the works of these two authors, think about how they use eye dialect. How does it contribute to the construction of the characters in the narrative?