The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Modern Literary Branches
by Bernard W. Bell
University of Massachusetts Press, 2005
Paper: 978-1-55849-473-2 | eISBN: 978-1-61376-067-3
Library of Congress Classification PS374.N4B45 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.509896073
Paper: 978-1-55849-473-2 | eISBN: 978-1-61376-067-3
Library of Congress Classification PS374.N4B45 2004
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.509896073
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In 1987 Bernard W. Bell published The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition, a comprehensive history of more than 150 novels written by African Americans from 1853 to 1983. The book won the Distinguished Scholarship Award of the College Language Association and was reprinted five times. Now Bell has produced a new volume that serves as a sequel and companion to the earlier work, expanding the coverage to 2001 and examining the writings and traditions of a remarkably wide array of black novelists.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Bernard W. Bell is professor of English at Pennsylvania State University. He is coeditor of W.E.B. Du Bois on Race and Culture: Philosophy, Politics, and Poetics (1996), coeditor of Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of the African American Literary Tradition (1998), and editor of Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African American Postmodernist (2001).
REVIEWS
"Absolutely essential to the teaching of African American literature . . . Bell is a rare scholar whose knowledge of authors, works, historical movements, social history, folk formations, and subgenres of fiction is strikingly impressive."—Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Professor Bell presents us with another groundbreaking study of the 'social' work performed by African American literature. Ranging over subjects including African heritage, masculinity, femininity, and personhood, the arts, and religious and political identities, The Contemporary African American Novel shows us how African American life has always found nuanced expression through African American literary forms. This is a major achievement by a major scholar."—Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University
"Bell's brilliant new work is a history of the novel that demonstrates the intellectual breadth of that tradition. Traversing a terrain that stretches from the vernacular and oral traditions to contemporary mysteries and romances, Bell's explorations take us through Realism and Naturalism to Modernism, the Black Arts Movement, Postmodernism, Structuralism, and Post-Structuralism to Americentric tropes of multicultural identity and community. His readings are insightful and leave much food for thought. . . . Evident throughout is the author's meticulous thoroughness in clear and precise language that makes it a text no serious student of African American fiction can avoid."—Nellie Y. McKay, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"A masterful performance, tremendously impressive as a work of literary criticism and theory, historical scholarship, and cultural study. . . . It will become, without question, the standard work in the field, a stimulating source of critical insight and a valuable reference tool--one that everyone who writes about or teaches African American literature will need (and will be eager!) to own."—William E. Cain, Wellesley College
"Bell demands that 'authentic' African American writers be 'realists who have a redemptive, progressive vision of racial politics'(184)."—American Literature
"Bell's study is best when illustrating the importance of vernacular and natonalist traditions in African American fiction."—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"...[A] profound and informative work. . . . Bell's writing is textured, to move us down the long and winding road."—Peter Nazareth, University of Iowa
"Professor Bell presents us with another groundbreaking study of the 'social' work performed by African American literature. Ranging over subjects including African heritage, masculinity, femininity, and personhood, the arts, and religious and political identities, The Contemporary African American Novel shows us how African American life has always found nuanced expression through African American literary forms. This is a major achievement by a major scholar."—Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University
"Bell's brilliant new work is a history of the novel that demonstrates the intellectual breadth of that tradition. Traversing a terrain that stretches from the vernacular and oral traditions to contemporary mysteries and romances, Bell's explorations take us through Realism and Naturalism to Modernism, the Black Arts Movement, Postmodernism, Structuralism, and Post-Structuralism to Americentric tropes of multicultural identity and community. His readings are insightful and leave much food for thought. . . . Evident throughout is the author's meticulous thoroughness in clear and precise language that makes it a text no serious student of African American fiction can avoid."—Nellie Y. McKay, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"A masterful performance, tremendously impressive as a work of literary criticism and theory, historical scholarship, and cultural study. . . . It will become, without question, the standard work in the field, a stimulating source of critical insight and a valuable reference tool--one that everyone who writes about or teaches African American literature will need (and will be eager!) to own."—William E. Cain, Wellesley College
"Bell demands that 'authentic' African American writers be 'realists who have a redemptive, progressive vision of racial politics'(184)."—American Literature
"Bell's study is best when illustrating the importance of vernacular and natonalist traditions in African American fiction."—Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"...[A] profound and informative work. . . . Bell's writing is textured, to move us down the long and winding road."—Peter Nazareth, University of Iowa
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents On Becoming an African American Scholar Activist 0 Introduction 1 1 / Mapping the Rhetoric, Politics, and Poetics of Representation in the Contemporary African American Novel 00 A Critique of Eurocentric, Afrocentric, and Americentric Cultural Theories, Critics, and Criticism 00 A Postcolonial African Americentric, Neomasculinist Theory of Antiblack Racism and Internal Colonialism 00 An African Americentric Vernacular Theory of Culture and Identity 00 Core Black American Culture 00 The Vernacular Tradition and the Rhetoric, Dialectic, and Dialogic of the Contemporary African American Novel 00 2 / The Roots of the Contemporary African American Novel 00 Sociohistorical, Sociocultural, and Sociopsychological Landscape 00 African Oral Narrative Roots 00 African American Folk Roots 000 Residually Oral Forms: Oratory, Myth, Legend, Tale, and Song 000 Literary Sources and Branches 000 Abolitionist Literature 000 The King James Bible 000 Popular Fiction 000 3 / Mapping the Peaks and Valleys of the African American Novel (1853-1962) 000 Early Historical Romance, Social Realism, and Beyond 000 Antebellum and Civil War Novels (1853-1865) 000 Postbellum, Reconstruction, and Post-Reconstruction Novels (1865-1902) 000 The Pre-World War I Novels of the Old Guard (1902-1917) 000 Romance, Realism, and Naturalism 000 Legacy of the Old Guard 000 Modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Search for New Modes of Narrative (1917-1936) 000 Poetic Realism and Historical Romance 000 Genteel Realism: Assimilationism, Nationalism, or Biculturalism 000 Folk Romance: Primitivism, Pastoralism, and Ancestralism 000 Folk Realism: Religion, Music, Humor, and Language 000 Satiric Realism: The Vices and Follies of the Folk and Black Bourgeoisie 000 Richard Wright and the Triumph of Naturalism (1936-1952) 000 Wright and the "Chicago School" of Sociology 000 The Great Depression and the Communist Party 000 The Federal Writers' Project 000 The Triumph of Naturalism 000 Continuity and Change in the Novels of the Forties 000 Myth, Legend, and Ritual in the Novels of the Fifties (1952-1962) 000 Beyond Naturalism 000 Myth, Legend, and Ritual 000 4 / Forms of Neorealism: Critical and Poetic Realism (1962-1983) 000 The Black Power and Black Arts Movements 000 The Women's Rights and Black Feminist Movements 000 Literary Continuity and Change: Modernism and Neorealism 000 Critical and Poetic Neorealism 000 Critical Realism 000 JOHN OLIVER KILLENS (1916-1987) 000 JOHN A[LFRED] WILLIAMS (1925-) 000 ALICE [MALSENIOR] WALKER (1944-) 000 GAYL [AMANDA] JONES (1949-) 000 [MILTONA] TONI [MIRKIN] CADE BAMBARA (1939-1995) 000 Poetic Realism and the Gothic Fable 000 [CHLOE ANTHONY] TONI [WOFFORD] MORRISON (1931-) 000 Continuity in the Novel of the Sixties and Seventies 000 5 / Modernism and Postmodernism (1962-1983) 000 From Modernism and Structuralism to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism 000 Fabulation, Legend, and Neoslave Narrative 000 MARGARET [ABIGAIL] WALKER (1915-1998) 000 ERNEST J[AMES] GAINES (1933-) 000 WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY (1937-) 000 RONALD L. FAIR (1932-) 000 Fabulation, Romance, and Fantasy 000 JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN (1941-) 000 CLARENCE [LEE] MAJOR (1936-) 000 Fabulation and Satire 000 CHARLES STEVENSON WRIGHT (1932-) 000 [GEORGE HAROLD] HAL BENNETT (1930-) 000 ISHMAEL REED (1938-) 000 Change in the Novel of the Sixties and Seventies 000 6 / Continuity and Change in Ethnic Tropes of Identity Formation (1983-2001) 000 The Contemporary Black Aesthetic: Afrocentric and Diasporic Tropes of African American Identity and Community 000 PAULE [VALENZA PAULINE BURKE] MARSHALL (1929-) 000 ALBERT [LEE] MURRAY (1916-) 000 GLORIA NAYLOR (1950-) 000 AL[BERT JAMES] YOUNG (1939-) 000 DAVID [HENRY] BRADLEY [JR.] (1950-) 000 LEON [RICHARD] FORREST (1937-1997) 000 7 / The New Black Aesthetic: Eurocentric Metafiction and African Americentric Tropes of Transcultural Identity and Community 000 CHARLES [RICHARD] JOHNSON (1948-) 000 NATHANIEL [ERNEST] MACKEY (1947-) 000 TREY ELLIS [WILLIAM ARTHUR ELLIS III] (1962-) 000 PERCIVAL L[EONARD] EVERETT (1956-) 000 COLSON WHITEHEAD (1969-) 000 8 / Contemporary African American Paraliterature: Science/Speculative Fiction, Gay/Lesbian, and Detective/Mystery Novels and Romances 000 Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction Novels 000 SAMUEL [RAY] DELANY [JR.] (1942-) 000 OCTAVIA [ESTELLE] BUTLER (1947-) 000 Gay/Lesbian Novels and Romances 000 LARRY DUPLECHAN (1956-) 000 E[VERETTE] LYNN HARRIS (1957-) 000 Detective/Mystery Novels 000 BARBARA NEELY (1941-) WALTER [ELLIS] MOSLEY (1952-) 000 Conclusion 000 Notes 000 Selected Bibliography 000 Index 000
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