Reading Africa Into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales" The literature often considered the most American is rooted not only in European and Western culture but also in African and American Creole cultures. Keith Cartwright places the literary texts of such noted authors as George Washington Cable, W.E.B. DuBois, Alex Haley, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, Joel Chandler Harris, Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, and many others in the context of the history, spiritual traditions, folklore, music, linguistics, and politics out of which they were written. Cartwright grounds his study of American writings in texts from the Senegambian/Old Mali region of Africa. Reading epics, fables, and gothic tales from the crossroads of this region and the American South, he reveals that America's foundational African presence, along with a complex set of reactions to it, is an integral but unacknowledged source of the national culture, identity, and literature. |
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... Harris confounds the notion of cultural evolution " with which he had flirted in his scholarly introduction to Nights ( 152 ) . Harris took great care with the language of the tales , which he felt to be inseparable from narrative ...
... Harris seems to have solicited Charles Colcock Jones's aid in developing African Jack's Gullah tales . Jones wrote to Harris in March of 1883 , referring to three tales “ already gleaned , " offering Harris further assistance with the ...
... Harris.2 Du Bois cites the Fisk Jubilee Singers as his soul source , but Harris's literary reevaluation of ver- nacular traditions ( along with the national interest he received and the na- tional / international interest in folklore ...
Contents
From Sunjata to The Souls of Black Folk | 25 |
Toomer Hurston and Ellison | 48 |
Bound CulturesThe Creolization of Dixie | 91 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
Reading Africa into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales Keith Cartwright Limited preview - 2014 |
Reading Africa into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales Keith Cartwright Limited preview - 2021 |
Reading Africa Into American Literature: Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales Keith Cartwright Limited preview - 2002 |