UID:
almafu_9958353367602883
Format:
1 online resource
ISBN:
9781512800852
Series Statement:
Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction
Content:
Herman Beavers offers a richly nuanced study of Ernes J. Gaines, James Alan McPherson, and Ralph Ellison as writers who have found ways to invest circumstances that might otherwise be seen as sites of squalor or despair with a sense of cultural vitality. He examines the Ellisonian themes and motifs the two later writers take up in their fiction, and looks at Ellison's influence on the strategies they enact to construct themselves as American writers.For Beavers, the fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson are peopled by characters who value acts of storytelling and whose stories frame a fuller, more complex, and more inclusive version of American identity than those the dominant white culture has allowed.
Note:
Frontmatter --
,
Contents --
,
Preface --
,
Acknowledgments --
,
Introduction --
,
Part I. Innovations of Kin --
,
Chapter 1. Relative Politics: The Literary Triumverate of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Ernest J. Gaines, and James Alan McPherson --
,
Chapter 2. The Possible in Things Unwritten: Kinship and Innovation in the Fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson --
,
Part II. Trueblood Echoing --
,
Chapter 3. Tilling the Soil to Find Ourselves: Conversion, Labor, and [Re]membering in Gaines's Of Love and Dust and In My Father's House --
,
Chapter 4. "If It's Going To Be Any Good, It's Your Story"-. Legibility, [Un]speakability, and Historical Performance in McPherson's "A Solo Song: For Doc" --
,
Part III: The Lower Frequencies --
,
Chapter 5. Voices from the Underground: Conspiracy, Intimacy, and Voice in Gaines's Fictions --
,
Chapter 6. "The Life of the Law Is Thus a Life of Art": Antagonism and Persuasion in McPherson's Legal Fiction Trilogy --
,
Conclusion --
,
Notes --
,
Bibliography --
,
Index --
,
Backmatter
,
In English.
Language:
English
DOI:
10.9783/9781512800852
URL:
https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512800852
URL:
https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512800852
Bookmarklink
