Within the Circle

by Mitchell, Angelyn

• ISBN13: 9780822315360
• ISBN10: 082231536X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1994-12-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Within the Circleis the first anthology to present the entire spectrum of twentieth-century African American literary and cultural criticism. It begins with the Harlem Renaissance, continues through civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and on into contemporary debates of poststructuralist and black feminist theory. Drawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains in her introduction the importance for those "within the circle" of African American literature to examine their own works and to engage this critical canon. The essays in this collection-many of which are not widely available today-either initiated or gave critical definition to specific periods or movements of African American literature. They address issues such as integration, separatism, political action, black nationalism, Afrocentricity, black feminism, as well as the role of art, the artist, the critic, and the audience. With selections from Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and many others, this definitive collection provides a dynamic model of the cultural, ideological, historical, and aesthetic considerations in African American literature and literary criticism. A major contribution to the study of African American literature, this volume will serve as a foundation for future work by students and scholars. Its importance will be recognized by all those interested in modern literary theory as well as general readers concerned with the African American experience.Selections by (partial list):Houston A. Baker, Jr., James Baldwin, Sterling Brown, Barbara Christian, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Sarah Webster Fabio, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W. Lawrence Hogue, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Deborah E. McDowell, Toni Morrison, J. Saunders Redding, George Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Robert B. Stepto, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Mary Helen Washington, Richard Wright

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction. Voices Within the Circle: A Historical Overview of African American Literary Criticism	1	(20)
I The Harlem Renaissance
The New Negro	21	(11)
Alain Locke
The Negro in American Literature	32	(13)
William Stanley Braithwaite
The Gift of Laughter	45	(6)
Jessie Fauset
The Negro-Art Hokum	51	(4)
George S. Schuyler
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain	55	(5)
Langston Hughes
Criteria of Negro Art	60	(9)
W. E. B. DuBois
Our Literary Audience	69	(10)
Sterling A. Brown
Characteristics of Negro Expression	79	(18)
Zora Neale Hurston
II Humanistic/Ethical Criticism and the Protest Tradition
Blueprint for Negro Writing	97	(10)
Richard Wright
American Negro Literature	107	(10)
J. Saunders Redding
What White Publishers Won't Print	117	(5)
Zora Neale Hurston
New Poets	122	(12)
Margaret Walker
Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity	134	(15)
Ralph Ellison
Everybody's Protest Novel	149	(7)
James Baldwin
Integration and Race Literature	156	(9)
Arthur P. Davis
III The Black Arts Movement
The Myth of a ``Negro Literature''	165	(7)
LeRoi Jones
Amiri Baraka
Ethnic Impact in American Literature; Reflections on a Course	172	(12)
George E. Kent
The Black Arts Movement	184	(15)
Larry Neal
Towards a Black Aesthetic	199	(8)
Hoyt W. Fuller
Cultural Strangulation: Black Literature and the White Aesthetic	207	(6)
Addison Gayle, Jr.
Toward a Definition: Black Poetry of the Sixties (After LeRoi Jones)	213	(11)
Don L. Lee
Haki Madhubuti
Tripping with Black Writing	224	(11)
Sarah Webster Fabio
IV Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and the African American Critic
Preface to Blackness: Text and Pretext	235	(21)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives	256	(26)
Robert B. Stepto
Generational Shifts and the Recent Criticism of Afro-American Literature	282	(47)
Houston A. Baker, Jr.
Literary Production: A Silence in Afro-American Critical Practice	329	(19)
W. Lawrence Hogue
The Race for Theory	348	(12)
Barbara Christian
Appropriative Gestures: Theory and Afro-American Literary Criticism	360	(8)
Michael Awkward
Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature.	368	(33)
Toni Morrison
V Gender, Theory, and African American Feminist Criticism
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens	401	(9)
Alice Walker
Toward a Black Feminist Criticism.	410	(18)
Barbara Smith
New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism	428	(14)
Deborah E. McDowell
``The Darkened Eye Restored:'' Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women	442	(12)
Mary Helen Washington
Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book	454	(28)
Hortense J. Spillers
Gender and Afro-Americanist Literary Theory and Criticism	482	(17)
Valerie Smith
But What Do We Think We're Doing Anyway: The State of Black Feminist Criticism(s). or My Version of a Little Bit of History	499	(16)
Barbara Christian
Some Implications of Womanist Theory	515	(8)
Sherley Anne Williams
Useful Sources for Related Reading	523	(3)
Acknowledgment of Copywrights	526	(2)
About the Critics	528	(3)
Index of Selected Names	531