A Camus for the Common Folk

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-182
Author(s):  
Anderson Rouse
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Bell Hooks ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
The Common

After World War II, Black writers and thinkers, from Richard Wright to bell hooks, influenced by French existentialists like Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Satre, adapted existentialism as a way to explain and respond to the African American experience. In his novels, Frank Yerby displays a sophisticated awareness of philosophical ideas, especially absurdism, and theological questions, despite his insistence that his novels could not be “reduce[ed] to a morality play” (Hill, “Interview,” 212). Yerby, in addition to using fiction to debunk historical myth, develops arguments about religion—that religion is invented “nonsense,” and, therefore, not worth killing or dying for, that God, if he exists, is cruel, careless, or distant, and that morality need not hew to an a priori standard. Yerby, then, responded to religious belief and voiced a philosophical response to human suffering (though, not particularly African American suffering) that was shaped by absurdist thought.

Sex, Love, and Letters

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith G. Coffin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
Betty Friedan ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
Francois Mauriac ◽  
Feminist Movements

When this book's author discovered a virtually unexplored treasure trove of letters to Simone de Beauvoir from Beauvoir's international readers, it inspired the author to explore the intimate bond between the famed author and her reading public. This correspondence, at the heart of the book, immerses us in the tumultuous decades from the late 1940s to the 1970s — from the painful aftermath of World War II to the horror and shame of French colonial brutality in Algeria and through the dilemmas and exhilarations of the early gay liberation and feminist movements. The letters provide a glimpse into the power of reading and the power of readers to seduce their favorite authors. The relationship between Beauvoir and her audience proved especially long, intimate, and vexed. The book traces this relationship, from the publication of Beauvoir's acclaimed The Second Sex to the release of the last volume of her memoirs, offering an unfamiliar perspective on one of the most magnetic and polarizing philosophers of the twentieth century. Along the way, we meet many of the greatest writers of Beauvoir's generation — Hannah Arendt; Dominique Aury, author of The Story of O; François Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize and nemesis of Albert Camus; Betty Friedan; and, of course, Jean-Paul Sartre — bringing the electrically charged salon experience to life. The book lays bare the private lives and political emotions of the letter writers and of Beauvoir herself. Her readers did not simply pen fan letters but, as the book shows, engaged in a dialogue that revealed intellectual and literary life to be a joint and collaborative production.

Revisiting Invariant am in Early African American Vernacular English

2020 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-407
Author(s):  
John McWhorter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New World ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
African American Vernacular English ◽  
World War ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
American Vernacular

Scholars of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) have generally assumed that the invariant am typical of minstrel depictions of Black speech was a fabrication, used neither by modern nor earlier Black Americans. However, the frequency with which invariant am occurs in renditions of interviews with ex-slave speech has always lent a certain uncertainty here, despite claims that these must have been distortions introduced by the interviewers. The author argues that the use of invariant am in a great many literary sources written by Black writers with sober intention, grammatical descriptions of Black speech that note invariant am as a feature, and the use of invariant am in regional British dialects imported to the New World suggest that invariant am was present in earlier AAVE and common among Black slaves and their immediate descendants, yet had largely disappeared by World War II.

scholarly journals Pour un roman français à l’américaine

2008 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Yan Hamel
Keyword(s):  
William Faulkner ◽  
Ernest Hemingway ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Albert Camus ◽  
John Steinbeck ◽  
Maurice Blanchot ◽  
John Dos Passos ◽  
Jean Giraudoux ◽  
Jean Paul ◽  
Francois Mauriac

Résumé Au cours de la période de douze ans durant laquelle il a publié ses nouvelles et ses romans (1937-1949), Jean-Paul Sartre a aussi fait paraître une série de critiques littéraires et de manifestes pour l’engagement de la littérature. Dans ces critiques et ces manifestes, l’auteur des Situations accorde une place centrale au genre romanesque : cette partie de son oeuvre a été un espace où, en prenant position par rapport aux autres écrivains, Sartre a implicitement défini sa conception du genre romanesque, ainsi que les ambitions littéraires, philosophiques et politiques qu’il poursuivait par l’entremise de ses propres fictions narratives. L’ensemble des oeuvres auxquelles Sartre s’intéresse dans ses essais sur la littérature se caractérise par une stricte bipartition. D’un côté, des prédécesseurs et des contemporains français tels que Jean Giraudoux, François Mauriac, Paul Nizan, Albert Camus et Maurice Blanchot sont plus ou moins durement éreintés selon les cas. En contrepartie, des oeuvres écrites par ceux que Sartre appelle indifféremment « les Américains », c’est-à-dire, pour l’essentiel, William Faulkner, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck et Richard Wright, suscitent de l’enthousiasme, reçoivent des éloges et sont considérés comme des modèles dont l’écrivain français devrait idéalement parvenir à s’inspirer. Dans cet article, l’auteur dégage la signification de cette bipartition entre oeuvres américaines et françaises et circonscrit la fonction qu’elle remplit dans le système de la critique littéraire sartrienne.

The Negro in Illinois

2013 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Performing Arts ◽  
Richard Wright ◽  
Black Writers ◽  
Works Progress Administration ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Chicago Renaissance ◽  
The Great Migration ◽  
Katherine Dunham

A major document of African American participation in the struggles of the Great Depression, The Negro in Illinois was produced by a special division of the Illinois Writers' Project, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration programs. Headed by Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps and white proletarian writer Jack Conroy, The Negro in Illinois employed major black writers living in Chicago during the 1930s, including Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Katherine Dunham, Fenton Johnson, Frank Yerby, and Richard Durham. The authors chronicled the Negroes' experience in Illinois from the beginnings of slavery to Abraham Lincoln's emancipation and the Great Migration, with individual chapters discussing various aspects of public and domestic life, recreation, politics, religion, literature, and performing arts. After the project was canceled in 1942, most of the writings went unpublished for more than half a century—until now. The editor of this book provides an informative introduction and epilogue which explain the origins of the project and place it in the context of the Black Chicago Renaissance.

Furiously Funny

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terrence T. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American Literature ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
African America

Furiously Funny: Comic Rage from Ralph Ellison to Chris Rock explores the simultaneous expression of militancy and humor in African American literature that came to fruition in the post–World War II moment. This book traces the increasing presence of African American works containing a combustible mix of fury and radicalism, of pathos and pain, of wit and love that fuse to create what I refer to as comic rage. I employ Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection to argue that works of comic rage centralize African American experience and tradition in direct challenges to dominant (white) narratives and (black) counter-narratives about race, identity, and nation. Works of comic rage sit at the center of the discourse through humor’s connection to the familiar and the recognizable in mainstream and African America. Comic rage capitalizes on the inability of African Americans to be fully expelled from mainstream American constructions of its identity and culture. Therefore, as with the abject that cannot be expelled, works of comic rage cause the narratives and counter-narratives to collapse and initiate a re-visioning of fundamental, destructive assumptions within white supremacy. Whether those assumptions involve history, literature, or (white) superiority, comic rage aggressively promotes an African American subjectivity that rejects white stereotypes of blackness and African American responses that remain dependent on the power dynamics that reinforce white supremacy (master vs. slave, perpetrator vs. victim).

Scriptures, Myths, and Power: The Bible at Work

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Burton Mack
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Linguistic Style ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Cultural Function ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Henry Louis Gates ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Christian Myth ◽  
American Society

The introduction to Burton Mack's extended conversation with Vincent Wimbush and Institute for Signifying Scripture, Claremont Graduate University. The conversation revolves around the cultural function of the Bible as Christian myth in American society, and the African-American domestication of the Bible as their Scripture. The essay explores the differences between the Bible as myth in the dominant Euro-American tradition, and the Bible as Scripture in African-American experience. Drawing upon the work of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the concept of "signifying" describes a remarkable linguistic style characteristic of African-American mentality and culture.

Scriptures, Myths, and Power: The Bible at Work - Chapter Five

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Burton Mack
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Linguistic Style ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Cultural Function ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Henry Louis Gates ◽  
American Tradition ◽  
Christian Myth ◽  
American Society

Part 6 of Burton Mack's extended conversation with Vincent Wimbush and Institute for Signifying Scripture, Claremont Graduate University. The conversation revolves around the cultural function of the Bible as Christian myth in American society, and the African-American domestication of the Bible as their Scripture. The essay explores the differences between the Bible as myth in the dominant Euro-American tradition, and the Bible as Scripture in African-American experience. Drawing upon the work of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the concept of "signifying" describes a remarkable linguistic style characteristic of African-American mentality and culture.

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