Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture

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University of Illinois Press, 1999 - History - 361 pages
Grounded in Charles Joyner's unique blend of rigorous scholarship and genuine curiosity, these thoughtful and incisive essays by the eminent southern historian and folklorist explore the South's extraordinary amalgam of cultural traditions.
By examining the mutual influence of history and folk culture, Shared Traditions reveals the essence of southern culture in the complex and dynamic interactions of descendants of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans. The book covers a broad spectrum of southern folk groups, folklore expressions, and major themes of southern history, including antebellum society, slavery, the coming of the Civil War, economic modernization in the Appalachians and the Sea Islands, immigration, the civil rights movement, and the effects of cultural tourism.
Joyner addresses the convergence of African and European elements in the Old South and explores how specific environmental and demographic features shaped the acculturation process. He discusses divergent practices in worship services, funeral and burial services, and other religious ceremonies. He examines links between speech patterns and cultural patterns, the influence of Irish folk culture in the American South, and the southern Jewish experience. He also investigates points of intersection between history and legend and relations between the new social history and folklore.
Ranging from rites of power and resistance on the slave plantation to the creolization of language to the musical brew of blues, country, jazz, and rock, Shared Traditions reveals the distinctive culture born of a sharing by black and white southerners of their deep-rooted and diverse traditions.

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Contents

Southern Folk Culture Unity in Diversity
11
The Old South
27
Let Us Break Bread Together Cultural Interaction in the Old South
29
In His Hands The World of the Plantation Slaves
41
History as Ritual Rites of Power and Resistance on the Slave Plantation
93
Guilty of Holiest Crime The Passion of John Brown
103
Three Historiographical Forays
139
The South as a Folk Culture David Potter and the Southern Enigma
141
The Sounds of Southern Culture Blues Country Jazz and Rock
193
Sweet Music Tradition Creativity and the Appalachian Dulcimer
208
Sea Island Legacy Folk Tradition and the Civil Rights Movement
228
Folklore and History A Dialogue
241
Alice of the Hermitage A Study in Legend Belief and History
243
A Model for the Analysis of Folklore Performance in Historical Context
254
Folklore and Social Transformation Historians and Folklorists in the Modern World
262
The Future of Folk Culture
273

The Bold Fischer Man David Hackett Fischer and the British Sources of American Folk Culture
151
The Narrowing Gyre Henry Glassie Irish Folk Culture and the American South
166
The New South
175
A Community of Memory Assimilation and Identity among the Jews of Georgetown
177
Endangered Traditions Resort Development and Cultural Conservation on the Sea Islands
275
Notes
283
Index
349
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About the author (1999)

Charles Joyner is Burroughs Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University, past president of the Southern Historical Association, and the author of Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community.