SOURCE: "Riffs and Rituals: Folklore in the Work of Ralph Ellison," in Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction, edited by Dexter Fisher and Robert B. Stepto, The Modern Language Association of America, 1979, pp. 153-69.

In the following essay, O'Meally examines folklore allusions and interpretations both in the fiction of Ralph Ellison—most notably his one novel, Invisible Man—and in his nonfiction, including the essays in Shadow and Act.

Nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembric of his genius.

—James Weldon Johnson

Discussions of folk tradition and literature which slight the specific literary forms involved seem to me questionable.

—Ralph Ellison

I

It has long been a commonplace that much of Afro-American literature has...