Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man A Casebook

by Callahan, John F.

• ISBN13: 9780195145359
• ISBN10: 0195145356
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This volume offers students and scholars a rich variety of interpretations from which to fashion their own views of the novel and the man who created it. Both Ellison's comments, a number of which appear in print here for the first time, and those of ten distinguished scholars of American andAfrican-American literature take the position that there can be no last word on Invisible Man. Different as they are, the essays share a respect for the novel's fluidity and for every reader's encounter with its narrator, story, and meanings.

Author Biography

John F. Callahan is Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis and Clark College

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(20)
JOHN F. CALLAHAN
Part I Prologue: Ralph Ellison on Invisible Man
Before Publication	23	(12)
After Publication	35	(30)
Part II Critical Essays on Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison's Trueblooded Bildungsroman	65	(16)
KENNETH BURKE
Ellison's Zoot Suit	81	(28)
LARRY NEAL
Ellison's Vision of Communitas	109	(16)
NATHAN A. SCOTT, JR.
Ralph Ellison, Race, and American Culture	125	(24)
MORRIS DICKSTEIN
The Rules of Magic: Hemingway as Ellison's "Ancestor"	149	(40)
ROBERT G. O'MEALLY
The Meaning of Narration in Invisible Man	189	(32)
VALERIE SMITH
The Conscious Hero and the Rites of Man: Ellison's War	221	(32)
JOHN S. WRIGHT
Notes on the Invisible Women in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man	253	(14)
CLAUDIA TATE
Luminosity from the Lower Frequencies	267	(20)
LEON FORREST
Ellison's Invisible Man	287	(36)
JOHN F. CALLAHAN
Part III Epilogue
On Initiation Rites and Power: A Lecture at West Point	323	(22)
RALPH ELLISON
Selected Bibliography	345