Reading Africa into American Literature : Epics, Fables, and Gothic Tales / Keith Cartwright.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cartwright, Keith, 1960-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics in literature.

Slavery in literature.

African Americans in literature.

African Americans--Intellectual life.

African Americans.

Fables, American--History and criticism.

Fables, American.

Gothic revival (Literature)--United States.

Gothic revival (Literature).

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

African literature--Appreciation--United States.

African literature.

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

American literature--African influences.

Africa--In literature.

Africa.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (282 p.)

Edition:

Paperback edition.

Place of Publication:

Lexington, Kentucky : The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Part I. Epic Impulses/Narratives of Ancestry

1. Imperial Mother Wit, Gumbo Erotics: From Sunjata to The Souls of Black Folk 25

2. Of Root Figures and Buggy Jiving: Toomer, Hurston, and Ellison 48

3. Myth-making, Mother-child-ness, and Epic Renamings: Malcolm X, Kunta Kinte, and Milkman Dead 68

Part II. Bound Cultures/The Creolization of Dixie

4. "Two Heads Fighting": African Roots, Geechee/Gombo Tales 93

5. Creole Self-Fashioning: Joel Chandler Harris's "Other Fellow" 114

6. Searching for Spiritual Soil: Milk Bonds and the "Maumer Tongue" 130

Part III. Shadows of Africans/Gothic Representations

7. The Spears of the Party of the Merciful: Senegambian Muslims, Scriptural Mercy, and Plantation Slavery 157

8. Babo and Bras Coupe:

Malign Machinations, Gothic Plots 181

9. "Never Once but Like Ripples": On Boomeranging Trumps, Rememory, and the Novel as Medium 203.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [241]-257) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780813190891

0813190894

9780813158334

0813158338

OCLC:

606618002