Civil rights in the white literary imagination : innocence by association / Jonathan W. Gray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gray, Jonathan W., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

Civil rights in literature.

Race relations in literature.

African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century.

African Americans.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (175 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2013]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Gray seeks to determine how, exactly, the Civil Rights Movement changed the literary possibilities of four iconic American writers: Robert Penn Warren, Norman Mailer, Eudora Welty, and William Styron. He argues that these writers significantly shaped discourse on civil rights as the movement was occurring, but in ways that - intentionally or not - often relied upon a notion of the relative innocence of the South with regard to racial affairs, and on a construct of African Americans as politically and/or culturally naive.

Contents:

Cover; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction: PERFECT UNIONS: Innocence and Exceptionalism in American Literary Discourse; Chapter One: "THE LOOK BACK HOME FROM A LONG DISTANCE": Robert Penn Warren and the Limits of Historical Responsibility; Chapter Two: THE APOCALYPTIC HIPSTER: "The White Negro" and Norman Mailer's Achievement of Style; Chapter Three: "THE WHOLE HEART OF FICTION": Eudora Welty inside the Closed Society; Chapter Four: "NEGROES, AND BLOOD, AND HORROR": William Styron, Existential Freedom, and The Confessions of Nat Turner; Epilogue: PERFECTING INNOCENCE; Notes; Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-62103-053-9

OCLC:

808108920