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This teeming compendium of tales assembles and classifies the abundant lore and storytelling prevalent in the French culture of southern Louisiana. It is the largest, most diversse, and best annotated collection of French-language tales ever published in the United States. Side by side are dual-language retellings - the Cajun French and its English translation - along with insighful commentaries. This volume reveals the long and lively heritage of the Louisiana folktale among French Creoles and Cajuns and shows how tale-telling in Louisiana has remained vigorously and constantly changing. Some of the best storytellers of the present day are highlighted in biographical sketches and are identified by some of the best tales. Their repertory includes animal stories, magic stories, jokes, tall tales, Pascal (improvised) stories, and legendary tales - all of them colorful examples of Louisiana narrative at its best. Though greatly transformed since the French arrived on southern soil, the French oral tradition is alive and flourishing today. It proves to be even more complex and varied than has been shown in previous studies, for revealed here are African influences as well as others that have been filtered from America's multicultural mainstream.
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Barry Jean Ancelet, a professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, is author of many books about the French culture of southern Louisiana, including
Cajun Country and
Cajun and Creole Music Makers: Musiciens cadiens et créoles, both published by University Press of Mississippi.
