Italian Folktales in America: The Verbal Art of an Immigrant Woman

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Italian Folktales in America Wayne State University Folklore Archive Study Series Janet Langlois, General Editor This volume inaugurates the Wayne State University Folklore Archive Study Series, first conceptualized by folklorists Michael Bell, John Gutowski, and Robert Teske in the mid-1970s. The series is envisioned as a way to make the rich urban folklore materials housed in the archive more accessible to the reading public than they might otherwise be. Two titles previously published by Wayne State University Press, Susie Hoogasian Villa's 100 Armenian Tales and Harriet M. Pawlowska's Merrily We Sing: 105 Polish Folksongs, point to the success of translating archival resources into book form. The critical introductions to the volumes planned for the series situate the folkloristic data within a sociocultural and historic framework. They also ground the data in appropriate theoretical models. Here authors Mathias and Raspa use the model of social change to structure the shifts in Clementina Todesco's storytelling style as she moves from the Old World peasant stables of the Veneto to the New World urban experience in New York, Detroit, and Phoenix. ...