Conceptual metaphors related to the domain ‘conjuring’ in the studies into Afro-American oral folklore of the coast of Georgia in the 1930s
Abstract
The author became interested in the body of the texts analyzed in this article during her research on variants and versions of the Flying Africans myth in 20th century culture and literature. In the US the main folkloric source of this narrative is an account of oral folklore collected in Georgia from African-Americans, published in 1940 as a part of Federal’s Writer’s Project. The book, entitled Drums and Shadows. Survival Studies Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes directed by Mary Granger, contains interviews with people many of whom had been born in slavery. African Americans interviewed in the project speak widely about talismans, spirits, lucky and unlucky omens and actions, as well as other aspects of their culture and folklore, including a significant amount of flight-related narratives. The dialect in the interviews is transcribed phonetically and difficult for a non-English native speaker, nevertheless the concept of ‘conjuring’ grabs the attention of the reader. This short study is an introduction to a broader analysis of the conceptual domain of ‘conjuring’ in the GWP interviews. The author uses the conceptual metaphor theory in order to establish how magic and witchcraft are conceptualized by the Georgia Writer’s Project speakers.
Keywords
Flying Africans myth; folklore; African Americans; domain of ‘conjuring’
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Instytut Religioznawstwa Wydział Filozoficzny Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1443-2907
Elżbieta Binczycka-Gacek, absolwentka polonistyki i religioznawstwa, doktorantka w Katedrze Komparatystyki Literackiej Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, gdzie pod kierun‑ kiem dr hab. Katarzyny Mroczkowskiej-Brand przygotowała pracę doktorską poświę‑ coną obecności mitu Flying Africans we współczesnej literaturze Karaibów i Ameryki Północnej. Publikowała m.in. w czasopismach „Rocznik Komparatystyczny”, „Konteksty
Kultury”, „Kultura – Historia – Globalizacja”. Członkini African Literature Association.
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