GRE Reading Comprehension
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Source: NO2
Extended debate concerning the exact point of origin of individual folktales told by Afro-American salves has unfortunately taken precedence over analysis of the tales meaning and function. Cultural continuities with Africa were not dependent on importation and perpetuation of specific folktales in their pristine form. It is in the place that tales occupied in the lives of the slaves and in the meaning slaves derived from them that the clearest resemblances to African tradition can be found. Afro-American slaves did not borrow tales indiscriminately from the Whites among whom they lives. Black people were most influenced by those Euro-American tales whose functional meaning and aesthetic appeal had the greatest similarity to the tales with deep roots in their ancestral homeland. Regardless of where slave tales came from, the essential point is that, with respect to language, delivery, details of characterization. and plot, slaves quickly made them their own.
The passage suggests that the author would regard which of the following areas of inquiry as most likely to reveal the slaves' cultural continuities with Africa?
- A The means by which Blacks disseminated their folktales in nineteenth-century American
- B Specific regional differences in the styles of delivery used by the slaves in telling folktales
- C The functional meaning of Black folktales in the lives of White children raised by slaves
- D The specific way the slaves used folktales to impart moral teachings to their children
- E The complexities of plot that appear most frequently in the slaves' tales