Through a series of essays that explore the forms, themes, genres, historical contexts, major authors, and latest critical approaches, A Companion to African American Literature presents a comprehensive chronological overview of African American literature from the eighteenth century to the modern day
- Examines African American literature from its earliest origins, through the rise of antislavery literature in the decades leading into the Civil War, to the modern development of contemporary African American cultural media, literary aesthetics, and political ideologies
- Addresses the latest critical and scholarly approaches to African American literature
- Features essays by leading established literary scholars as well as newer voices
Table of Content
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction 1
Gene Andrew Jarrett
Part I. The Literatures of Africa, Middle Passage, Slavery, and Freedom: The Early and Antebellum Periods, c.1750–1865 9
1. Back to the Future: Eighteenth-Century Transatlantic Black Authors 11
Vincent Carretta
2. Africa in Early African American Literature 25
James Sidbury
3. Ports of Call, Pulpits of Consultation: Rethinking the Origins of African American Literature 45
Frances Smith Fosterand Kim D. Green
4. The Constitution of Toussaint: Another Origin of African American Literature 59
Michael J. Drexlerand Ed White
5. Religion in Early African American Literature 75
Joanna Brooksand Tyler Mabry
6. The Economies of the Slave Narrative 90
Philip Gould
7. The 1850s: The First Renaissance of Black Letters 103
Maurice S. Lee
8. African American Literary Nationalism 119
Robert S. Levine
9. Periodicals, Print Culture, and African American Poetry 133
Ivy G. Wilson
Part II. New Negro Aesthetics, Culture, and Politics: The Modern Period, 1865–c.1940 149
10. Racial Uplift and the Literature of the New Negro 151
Marlon B. Ross
11. The Dialect of New Negro Literature 169
Gene Andrew Jarrett
12. African American Literary Realism, 1865–1914 185
Andreá N. Williams
13. Folklore and African American Literature in the Post-Reconstruction Era 200
Shirley Moody-Turner
14. The Harlem Renaissance: The New Negro at Home and Abroad 212
Michelle Ann Stephens
15. Transatlantic Collaborations: Visual Culture in African American Literature 227
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
16. Aesthetic Hygiene: Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Work of Art 243
Mark Christian Thompson
17. African American Modernism and State Surveillance 254
William J. Maxwell
Part III. Reforming the Canon, Tradition, and Criticism of African American Literature: The Contemporary Period, c.1940–Present 269
18. The Chicago Renaissance 271
Michelle Yvonne Gordon
19. Jazz and African American Literature 286
Keith D. Leonard
20. The Black Arts Movement 302
James Edward Smethurst
21. Humor in African American Literature 315
Glenda R. Carpio
22. Neo-Slave Narratives 332
Madhu Dubey
23. Popular Black Women’s Fiction and the Novels of Terry Mc Millan 347
Robin V. Smiles
24. African American Science Fiction 360
Jeffrey Allen Tucker
25. Latino/a Literature and the African Diaspora 376
Theresa Delgadillo
26. African American Literature and Queer Studies: The Conundrum of James Baldwin 393
Guy Mark Foster
27. African American Literature and Psychoanalysis 410
Arlene R. Keizer
Name Index 421
Subject Index 442
About the author
Gene Andrew Jarrett is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Boston University. He is the author of Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature (2011) and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature (2007), and the editor or co-editor of several volumes and collections of African American literature and literary criticism.
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