Playing in the dark : whiteness and the literary imagination / Toni Morrison.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morrison, Toni, 1931-2019, author.

Contributor:

Frankfeldt, Gwen, book designer.

Arcata Graphics/Fairfield, binder.

Harvard University. Press, publisher.

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Joanna Banks Collection of African American Books (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

William E. Massey, Sr. lectures in the history of American civilization ; 1990.

The William E. Massey, Sr. lectures in the history of American civilization ; 1990

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--White authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

African Americans in literature.

Human skin color in literature.

Black people in literature.

White people in literature.

Race in literature.

American literature--White authors.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Banks, Joanna (donor) (Banks Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xiii pages, 5 unnumbered pages, 91 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1992.

Summary:

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison brings the genius of a master writer to this personal inquiry into the significance of African-Americans in the American literary imagination. Her goal, she states at the outset, is to "put forth an argument for extending the study of American literature ... draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World--without the mandate for conquest." Author of Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and other vivid portrayals of black American experience, Morrison ponders the effect that living in a historically racialized society has had on American writing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She argues that race has become a metaphor, a way of referring to forces, events, and forms of social decay, economic division, and human panic. Her compelling point is that the central characteristics of American literature--individualism, masculinity, the insistence upon innocence coupled to an obsession with figurations of death and hell--are responses to a dark and abiding Africanist presence. Through her investigation of black characters, narrative strategies, and idiom in the fiction of white American writers, Morrison provides a daring perspective that is sure to alter conventional notions about American literature. She considers Willa Cather and the impact of race on concept and plot; turns to Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville to examine the black force that figures so significantly in the literature of early America; and discusses the implications of the Africanist presence at the heart of Huckleberry Finn. A final chapter on Ernest Hemingway is a brilliant exposition of the racial subtext that glimmers beneath the surface plots of his fiction. Written with the artistic vision that has earned her a preeminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark will be avidly read by Morrison admirers as well as by students, critics, and scholars of American literature.

Contents:

Black matters

Romancing the shadow

Disturbing nurses and the kindness of sharks.

Notes:

"Copyright ©1992 by Toni Morrison"--verso of title page.

"Designed by Gwen Frankfeldt. The text was set in Linotron Galliard by Neil W. Kelley, The Quill Shop, and the display type was set in Adobe Stempel Schneidler Italic on a MacIntosh II computer by Gwen Frankfeldt. The book was printed and bound by Arcata Graphics/Fairfield on 55-pound Sebago Antique."--Colophon

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

Kislak Center Banks Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries in 2018 by Joanna Banks.

Banks Collection copy retains dust jacket.

ISBN:

0674673778 :

OCLC:

24952905