Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God A Casebook

by Wall, Cheryl A.

• ISBN13: 9780195121742
• ISBN10: 0195121740
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-09
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, first published in 1937 but subsequently out-of-print for decades, marks one of the most dramatic chapters in African-American literature and Women's Studies. Its popularity owes much to the lyricism of the prose, the pitch-perfect rendition of black vernacular English, and the memorable characters--most notably, Janie Crawford. Collecting the most widely cited and influential essays published on Hurston's classic novel over the last quarter century, this Casebook presents contesting viewpoints by Hazel Carby, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Barbara Johnson, Carla Kaplan, Daphne Lamothe, Mary Helen Washington, and Sherley Anne Williams. The volume also includes a statement Hurston submitted to a reference book on twentieth-century authors in 1942. As it records the major debates the novel has sparked on issues of language and identity, feminism and racial politics, A Casebook charts new directions for future critics and affirms the classic status of the novel.

Author Biography

Cheryl A. Wall is Professor of English at Rutgers University, where she teaches African-American and American Literature.

Table of Contents

Introduction	3	(14)
CherylL A. Wall
Zora Neale Hurston on Zora Neale Hurston	17	(2)
Encountering Zora Neale Hurston	19	(8)
Sherley Anne Williams
``I Love the Way Janie Crawford Left Her Husbands'': Zora Neale Hurston's Emergent Female Hero	27	(14)
Mary Helen Washington
Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God	41	(18)
Barbara Johnson
Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text	59	(58)
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
The Politics of Fiction, Anthropology, and the Folk: Zora Neale Hurston	117	(20)
Hazel V. Carby
The Erotics of Talk: ``That Oldest Human Longing'' in Their Eyes Were Watching God	137	(28)
Carla Kaplan
Vodou Imagery, African American Tradition, and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God	165	(24)
Daphne Lamothe
Suggested Reading	189