418. Nathan Rabalais. Louisiana Folktales.

418. We <a href="https://archive.org/download/418-nathan-rabalais/418--Nathan_Rabalais.mp3" target="_blank">talk</a> to Nathan Rabalais about his new book, <i>Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana</i>. Nathan J. Rabalais examines the impact of Louisiana’s remarkably diverse cultural and ethnic groups on folklore characters and motifs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.&nbsp;<a name='more'></a>&nbsp;Establishing connections between Louisiana and France, West Africa, Canada, and the Antilles, Rabalais explores how folk characters, motifs, and morals adapted to their new contexts in Louisiana. In particular, he examines the ways in which collective traumas experienced by Louisiana’s major ethnic groups — slavery, the <i>grand dérangement,</i> linguistic discrimination — resulted in fundamental changes in these folktales in relation to their European and African counterparts. Rabalais points to the development of an altered moral economy in Cajun and Creole folktales. Conventional heroic qualities, such as physical strength, are subverted in Louisiana folklore in favor of wit and cunning. Analyses of Black Creole animal tales like those of Bouki et Lapin and Tortie demonstrate the trickster hero’s ability to overcome both literal and symbolic entrapment through cleverness.<ol type="a"><li>This week in Louisiana history. May 22, 1873. U.S. President finally officially recognizes Gov. Wm. Kellogg's administration. </li><li>This week in New Orleans history. On May 22, 1964, Former New Orleans Mayor "Chep" Morrison's chartered a twin-engine Piper Aztec plane which crashed onto a Mexican mountainside. Morrison was 52 years old. On board, where his seven year-old son, Randy, the boy's eight week-old German Shepherd puppy, and five others.<br /> </li><li>This week in Louisiana. <br /> <a