From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American NarrativeUniversity of Illinois Press, 1991 - 225 pages This pioneering study of Afro-American narrative is far more critical, historical, and textual than biographical, chronological, and atextual. Robert Stepto asserts that Afro-American culture has its store of canonical stories or pregeneric myths, the primary one being the quest for freedom and literacy. This second edition includes a new preface and an afterward entitled "Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives." |
Contents
I Rose and Found My Voice Narration Authentication and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives | 3 |
Lost in a Cause Booker T Washingtons Up from Slavery | 32 |
The Quest of the Weary Traveler W E B Du Boiss The Souls of Black Folk | 52 |
THE RESPONSE | 93 |
Lost in a Quest James Weldon Johnsons The Autobiography of an ExColoured Man | 95 |
Literacy and Ascent Richard Wrights Black Boy | 128 |
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Common terms and phrases
Afro Afro-American letters Afro-American literature Afro-American narrative American articulate artistic ascent and immersion Atlanta authenticating strategy authenticating texts authorial control authorial posture Autobiography Bibb Bibb's Black Belt Black Boy Bledsoe's Brown catalog chapter Clotel communitas construction context cultural distrust documents Douglass Narrative Du Bois's Ellison episode event Ex-Coloured Man's example father fiction finally former slave's frame framed tale Frederick Douglass freedom genius loci heroic images immersion narrative interpretive communities Invisible Man's Johnson journey language master teller narrative strategy narrative's narrator narrator's Negro Northup novice passage personal history phrase portrait Preface quest race rituals racial Ralph Ellison reader remarks response revision revoices rhetoric ritual ground sense slave narratives Slavery social structure Solomon Northup Sorrow Songs Souls of Black spatial expressions story storytelling suggest symbolic space tale tion tradition tribal tropes Tuskegee Veil voice Washington William Wells Brown Wright's persona writing written young Richard