Framing the Problematics of Choice and Legacy: A Reading of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson as a Dilemma Tale

2021 ◽  
pp. 002193472110553
Author(s):  
Samuel Ato Bentum
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Complex Phenomenon ◽  
August Wilson ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Piano Lesson ◽  
Lesson Play

The choice for a particular narrative architecture has been a major concern for the literary writer and to the African American literary writer, the use of African oral literary elements has been a resourceful option. The present study hypothesizes that August Wilson uses the dilemma tale as a narrative architecture in his The Piano Lesson play and argues that this narrative style helps Wilson to frame the dialogic surrounding what legacy is to the African American. The study reveals that tradition is problematic for the African American to conceive. The conclusion is that the dilemma tale type as a narrative style helps to understand that tradition or, legacy is a complex phenomenon for the African American to fathom.

scholarly journals La rinascita della tragedia dallo spirito del blues nel teatro di August Wilson

Le Simplegadi ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (20) ◽  
pp. 147-161
Author(s):  
Valentina Rapetti
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Greek Tragedy ◽  
Black Aesthetic ◽  
August Wilson ◽  
Blues Music

Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August Wilson was the most prolific and represented African American playwright of the twentieth century. His Century Cycle, a series of ten plays that chronicle the lives of African Americans from the early 1900s to the late 1990s, is an expression of Wilson’s spiritual realism, a form of drama that, while adhering to some conventions of the Western realist tradition, also introduces elements of innovation inspired by blues music and Yoruba cosmology. This essay analyses the double cultural genealogy of Wilson’s work to show how, despite respecting the Aristotelian principle of mìmesis, his playwriting draws on a quintessentially black aesthetic. In conceiving of theatre as a ritualistic performative context where music and words intertwine, Wilson restored what Friedrich Nietzsche regarded as the authentic spirit of Greek tragedy – the harmony between Dionysian and Apollonian – while at the same time injecting an African American ethos into the Western theatrical canon.

August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey.

1997 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 343
Author(s):  
Sandra G. Shannon ◽  
Kim Pereira
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
August Wilson

Word Warrior

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja D. Williams
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American History ◽  
African American History ◽  
Labor Organizing ◽  
Black Newspapers ◽  
Narrative Style ◽  
Pivotal Moments ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
Hall Of Fame ◽  
The Way

Posthumously inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007, Richard Durham creatively chronicled and brought to life the significant events of his times. Durham's trademark narrative style engaged listeners with fascinating characters, compelling details, and sharp images of pivotal moments in American and African American history and culture. This book draws on archives and hard-to-access family records, as well as interviews with family and colleagues, to illuminate Durham's astounding career. Durham paved the way for black journalists as a dramatist and a star investigative reporter and editor for the pioneering black newspapers the Chicago Defender and Muhammed Speaks. Talented and versatile, he also created the acclaimed radio series Destination Freedom and Here Comes Tomorrow and wrote for popular radio fare like The Lone Ranger. Incredibly, Durham's energies extended still further—to community and labor organizing, advising Chicago mayoral hopeful Harold Washington, and mentoring generations of activists.

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