RHETORIC VERSUS ELOQUENCE IN THE AFRO-AMERICAN DOUBLE NARRATIVE: PERSPECTIVES ON AUDIENCE, AMBIVALENCE, AND AMBIGUITY.
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Title
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RHETORIC VERSUS ELOQUENCE IN THE AFRO-AMERICAN DOUBLE NARRATIVE: PERSPECTIVES ON AUDIENCE, AMBIVALENCE, AND AMBIGUITY.
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Identifier
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AAI8508704
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identifier
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8508704
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Creator
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HURD, MYLES RAYMOND.
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Contributor
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Alfred Kazin
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Date
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1985
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Modern
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Abstract
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My research project relates W. E. B. Du Bois' concept of "double consciousness"--the awareness of every Afro-American of his dual cultural heritage--to tensions in seven fictions by six black authors: Charles Chesnutt's "The Passing of Grandison" and "Baxter's Procrustes," Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods, James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, Richard Wright's "Long Black Song," Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk. I posit that these tensions result from numerous statements concerning the responsibility of black men of letters to serve as both spokesmen and craftsmen in acknowledging a dual commitment to sociological and aesthetic issues in their works. As bitonalities, these tensions create frequent structural irruptions presenting obstructions to thematic clarity and reflect the uncertainty of numerous Afro-American writers in determining whether they are blacks who happen to be writers or writers who happen to be black. "Rhetoric" refers to the means by which the black authors concern themselves with racial injustices, and "eloquence" refers to elements of artistic stabilization that distinguish literature from watered-down sociology.;My choice of representative works was influenced by my interest in analyzing a variety of narrative strategies employed by black American writers of fiction who display a willingness to serve as interpreters of black culture for white readers. As an intentionalist, I concentrate on the specific objectives of each of the black writers so as to avoid the mistake of pre-determining what a black author should have thought about the relationships between his black and white characters. My approach is chronological, and my major interest lies in pinpointing sources of ambivalence and ambiguity in the structural dynamics of the works examined.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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English
