scholarly journals Revising Alfred, Lord Tennyson: A Closer Look at Two Color Line Stories “The Wife of His Youth” and “Cecily’s Dream” by Charles W. Chesnutt

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher E. Koy
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Courtly Love ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Implied Reader ◽  
Arthurian Legend ◽  
English Poet ◽  
Final Failure ◽  
American Author ◽  
Idylls Of The King

This article explores an African American writer’s revision of a famous English poet Tennyson whose versified medieval portrait of the Arthurian legend appears in Idylls of the King as well as other poems. The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line (1899), a story collection by African American author Charles Chesnutt (1858–1932), addresses parameters contextualized in the aftermath of slavery such as esthetic notions of beauty tied to whiteness and intra-racial inequality. The final failure of two protagonists, a man and a woman, to fulfill their romantic aspirations of whiteness connects the collection’s titular story to “Cecily’s Dream.” In addition to the color-line theme, however, Chesnutt is motivated to refer to the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), including moments in which chivalric codes of honor, whiteness and flawed courtly love are idealized. Tennyson’s parabolic poems provide Chesnutt’s intertextual scheme to engage the implied reader by renewing, transforming and also subverting the motif of courtly love in these Arthurian idylls.

Combating Inequality in the Postwar City

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-136
Author(s):  
Joe William Trotter
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
African American ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Urban Political Economy ◽  
Organizing Center

Despite significant achievements during the interwar years, the Pittsburgh branch encountered the persistence and even intensification of racial inequality in the postwar urban political economy. Deindustrialization, urban renewal, neighborhood depopulation, and global economic restructuring reinforced the color line in mid-20th century Pittsburgh. The Urban League emerged at the organizing center of early efforts to offset the destructive impact of these local, national, and transnational developments on the city's African American community. The agency pressed employers, public officials, and labor unions to increase opportunities for African Americans in a broad range of skilled, clerical, and professional occupations and stimulated the growth of the black middle class.

“Times Change”: Frank J. Webb Addresses Robert Morris on the Promise of Reconstruction

2012 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Amber D. Moulton
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
American Author

In 1869, African American author Frank J. Webb returned to Washington, D.C., to become a “Carpetbagger” in the Reconstruction South. In a letter to black Bostonian Robert Morris, Webb illustrated the richness of antebellum African American reform networks and portrayed one man’s boundless optimism for race relations in postbellum America.

scholarly journals (Im)Perfect memories in Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-165
Author(s):  
Magdalena Łapińska ◽  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Continuing Bonds ◽  
Grief And Loss ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
American Author ◽  
Mourning Process

The article entitled “(Im)Perfect Memories in Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn” explores the fallibility of memory as presented in Another Brooklyn, a novel by an African American author Jacqueline Woodson. The text presents the idea that personal memories change due to the passage of time along with the new experiences of an individual, and relates it to the studied novel. Special attention is given to different dimensions of grief and loss presented in the analyzed story. The mourning after the loss of loved ones is explored through the use of concepts such as Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief, the selective amnesia and the idea of continuing bonds. The process of growing up is also briefly considered as a mourning process over losing the innocence and safety provided by childhood. Further, the article presents the hardships of growing up without a mother in an unsafe neighbourhood, the loss of vital friendships and the search of a better life - all introduced through the recollections which occurred after a significant passage of time and the accumulation of experiences which lend themselves to the change of the mindset of the main character.

scholarly journals Theorizing Black Power Movement in African American Literature: An Analysis of Morrison's Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Fayaz Ahmad Kumar ◽  
Colette Morrow
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black Power ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Black Aesthetics ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Author

This paper analyzes the influence of the Black Power movement on the AfricanAmerican literary productions; especially in the fictional works of Toni Morrison. As an African-American author, Toni Morrison presents the idea of 'Africanness' in her novels. Morrison's fiction comments on the fluid bond amongst the African-American community, the Black Power and Black Aesthetics. The works of Morrison focus on various critical points in the history of African-Americans, her fiction recalls not only the memory of Africa but also contemplates the contemporary issues. Morrison situates the power politics within the framework of literature by presenting the history of the African-American cultures.

“A Book One Can with Complete Confidence Call Important”: Albert Erskine, Ralph Ellison, and the Publishing of Invisible Man

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
DANIEL ROBERT KING
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Ralph Ellison ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
Library Of Congress ◽  
University Of Virginia ◽  
Invisible Man ◽  
International Publishing ◽  
American Author ◽  
The University

In this article I examine the editing and publishing of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man by Albert Erskine. Over the course of the piece, I deploy letters, drafts, and other material drawn from both Ellison's archive in the Library of Congress and Erskine's own archive at the University of Virginia to unpack how Erskine, as a white editor at a powerful international publishing house, conceived of his role in shepherding to market and marketing what he saw as a major literary work by an African American author.

Navigating Civil Rights and Black Power Struggles

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-158
Author(s):  
Joe William Trotter
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Power Struggles ◽  
Urban League ◽  
National Headquarters ◽  
The 1960S

By the mid-1960s, the political and social terrain on which the Urban League worked had changed dramatically. The Pittsburgh-born children of southern black migrants had come of age and pushed hard against the color line in the city's economy, politics, and institutions. National headquarters and local branches across the country worried about the increasing black nationalist turn in African American politics. But the ULP had helped to establish the postwar groundwork and even models for the fluorescence and even militance of Pittsburgh's Civil Rights and Black Power struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s.

scholarly journals Identity, difference and healing: Reading Beloved within the context of John Caputo’s theory of hermeneutics

Literator ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-48
Author(s):  
B. Du Plooy ◽  
P. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Nobel Laureate ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
The Third ◽  
American Author

John Caputo’s interest in the human struggle towards healing/wholing is obvious in his contribution on the work of Foucault: “On not knowing who we are: Madness, hermeneutics, and the night of truth in Foucault” (Caputo, 1993:233-262). While basing his reading of madness as a form of human suffering on the work of Foucault, Caputo moves beyond Foucaultian theory – “in a direction that, while it was not taken by Foucault, is perhaps suggested by him” (Caputo, 1993:234) – by envisioning a hermeneutics of response and redress and a therapeutics of “healing gestures” (Caputo, 1993:234). In this article we investigate the applicability of Caputo’s theory of progressive Foucaultian hermeneutics to Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”, a work of historical fiction. (Morrison is an African-American author and Nobel laureate.) We do this investigation by reading the novel’s three major characters (Sethe, Beloved and Denver) as symbolic representations of Caputo’s three kinds of hermeneutics, of which the third, represented by the character Denver, is constitutive of a therapeutics of healing.

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