Asserting self: Literature by African-Americans between 1880--1937 and its relationship to regionalism (Charles Waddell Chesnutt, Pauline E. Hopkins, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston) [microform]
- Bib ID:
- 3284445
- Format:
- Book and Microform
- Author:
- Paull, Sharee
- Description:
- 219 p.
- ISBN:
- 0493955925
- Summary:
-
Examining regionalism's emergence as an important genre and in the context of late nineteenth century social policy, I argue that Charles W. Chesnutt, Pauline E. Hopkins, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston depict in their literature social mechanisms of market value and political ideology, as well as mechanisms of gender, racial and class identity borrowing regional literary techniques. This study considers regionalism's subject matter, aesthetic, and theory in conjunction with the social dynamics that caused, sustained and criticized prejudice in America between 1880 and 1940. I show how these African-Americans, in the genres of short story and novel, adopt regional narrative styles in order to circulate a subtle protest against essentialist and segregated identity and nation formation.
Each chapter takes as its major subject a single text. The introduction provides a theoretical and methodological foundation for my project by arguing that the regional and the ethnic minority literary concerns, despite dominant culture's resistance to social change, advance a poly-vocal social structure as they encourage complex identity formations and hybrid cultural exchanges. The first chapter examines the economic problems of racialized discrimination in the literature of Chesnutt. The second chapter explores Hopkins's use of hybrid racial, sexual, and gender models of identity to question the normalized notions of the dominant society. The third chapter traces the misunderstandings, violence and comical incidents of the clash between dominant white society and black society as depicted through hyperbole by Hughes.
The fourth chapter depicts the economic, political, and social shifts of Hurston's characters from being mastered by others to self-mastery, over one's physical and emotional terrain, celebrating the body as self-possession--neither in disguise nor in contrast to the white body. The conclusion analyzes briefly the interaction between regionalism and newer developments in canonical formation, and it suggests that regionalism continues as an aspect of cultural studies. Contemporary American identities, wishing to assert themselves, rely on regional spaces for safe forums of expression.
- Notes:
-
- (UnM)AAI3075472
- Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 63-12, Section: A, page: 4315.
- Supervisor: Andrew Martin.
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, 2002.
- Reproduction:
- Microfiche. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International.
- Subject:
- Other authors/contributors:
- The University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
- Copyright:
-
In Copyright
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Copyright status was determined using the following information:
- Material type:
- Literary Dramatic Musical
- Published status:
- Unpublished
- Creation date:
- 2002
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