Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary RealismUniversity of Chicago Press, 1994 - 178 páginas From Abraham Lincoln's wry observation that Harriet Beecher Stowe was "the little lady who made this big war" to Mark Twain's "wild proposition" that Walter Scott had somehow touched off sectional hostilities, there have been many competing theories about the impact of literature on nineteenth-century American society. In this provocative book, Kenneth W. Warren argues that the rise of literary realism late in the century was shaped by and in turn helped to shape the politics of racial difference following Reconstruction. Taking up a variety of novelists from this period, including most prominently Henry James and William Dean Howells, Warren demonstrates that even works not directly concerned with race were instrumental in forging a Jim Crow nation. As a literary history, Black and White Strangers places the writing of realistic novels within the context of their serialization in the monthly magazines of the 1880s. By viewing these novels in light of editorial policies regarding social propriety, national unity, and literary aesthetics, Warren reveals the often surprising ways in which realistic fiction at once challenged and abetted the growing conservatism of racial politics. Warren also seeks to bridge the gap between American and African-American literary studies, which have hitherto been "strangers" to each other. James and Howells, he argues, can be understood fully only when read alongside W.E.B. Du Bois and Frances E.W. Harper; James's The American Scene, for instance must be seen as a companion text to Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk. In making these connections, Warren challenges American and African-American studies to see themselves as mutually constitutive enterprises and to question the value of canon-based criticism in any complete investigation of the meaning of "race" in American cultural history. |
Contenido
Reading Henry James | 18 |
Aesthetics Race and Warrants of Decency | 48 |
The Persistence of Uncle Tom and the Problem of Critical Distinction | 71 |
Black and White Strangers | 109 |
Conclusion | 131 |
Notes | 145 |
163 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Black and White Strangers: Race and American Literary Realism Kenneth W. Warren Vista previa limitada - 1994 |
Términos y frases comunes
abolitionist aesthetic African Americans Afro-American Ameri American literary American Novel American Scene argument Baker become belief Bersani's black Americans black stranger Bois's Bostonians Brydon Cable's Carby Century characters cial civil rights claims critique cultural democracy Despite Dixon Editor's Study Essays fact feelings fiction figure genteel George Washington Cable Gilder Harper's novel Henry James Howells's Ibid Imperative Duty individual Iola Leroy Isabel James's Jolly Corner labor Lady Lejaune Leopard's Spots magazines Miss Birdseye moral nation Negro nineteenth-century Northern novelist observations Plessy political possible potential Princess Casamassima problem question race racial difference radical Ransom readers reading realism realistic novel Reconstruction seems sentimental Silas Lapham Silent South slave slavery social equality social order Souls of Black Southern story Stowe Stowe's tion Tourgée Tourgée's tradition Twain Uncle Tom's Cabin University Press Verena vernacular voice vulgar W. E. B. Du Bois William Dean Howells women writing York