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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

Elouise Bell, personal narrative, traditional tales, literature

College

Humanities

Department

English

Abstract

“The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign—is it not? Of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet.”1 So Ralph Waldo Emerson champions the collection of ordinary stories. Others have stressed the importance of stories in general: author Leslie Marmon Silko believes that stories, while entertaining, are also “all we have . . . to fight off illness and death.”2 (Silko’s statement is not just metaphorical: a 1990 study indicated that “simply expressing one’s feelings improves affect, reduces stress, enhances physical health, and even increases the functioning of [a] person’s immune system.”3 According to Reynolds Price, “a need to tell and hear stories is essential to the species Homo sapiens — second in necessity apparently after nourishment and before love and shelter. Millions survive without love and home, almost none in silence.”4

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