Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195121732 ISBN 13: 9780195121735

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

This collection of previously published essays concerning Zora Neale Hurston's most widely read and widely taught novel will be useful to both students and scholars. Taken as a whole, this volume provides an excellent introduction to Hurston studies, and also demonstrates that, though the author's reputation and the critics' methodologies change through time, readers continue to turn to Hurston's work for greater understanding of the relationships between narrative and cultural politics, between individuals and communities, and between the desire for love and exploration and the experience of frustration and loss. (Missippi Quarterly)

Hurston would be pleased by the amount of thought in heir Eyes Were Watching God, a casebook edited by Cheryl A. Wall. (American Studies International, October 2001)

About the Author:

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0195121732
• ISBN 13: 9780195121735
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 204
• Editor: Wall Cheryl A.