The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism - Softcover

Gates Jr., Henry Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019506075X ISBN 13: 9780195060751

Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 1989

Synopsis

The second volume in a ground-breaking trilogy on Afro-American literature, The Signifying Monkey explores the relationships between the African and Afro-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Looking at the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture - and particularly at the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey, whose myths help articulate the black tradition's theory of its literature - Gates uncovers a unique system of interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition, that came with black slaves to the New World.

About this title

About the Author

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is Chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies and W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of Figures in Black, Loose Canons, and Colored People; general editor of The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers; and general editor of The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute series.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, U.S.A.
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019506075X
• ISBN 13: 9780195060751
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 324