A Historical Guide to Ralph Ellison (Historical Guides to American Authors) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195152514 ISBN 13: 9780195152517

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Ralph Ellison has been a controversial figure, both lionized and vilified, since he seemed to burst fully formed on to the national literary scene in 1952 with the publication of Invisible Man. In this volume Steven C. Tracy has gathered a broad range of critics who look not only at Ellison's seminal novel but also at the fiction and nonfiction work that both preceded and followed it, focusing on important historical and cultural influences that help contextualize Ellison's thematic concerns and artistic aesthetic. These essays, all previously unpublished, explore how Ellison's various apprenciceships--in politics as a Black radical; in music as an admirer and practioner of European, American, and African-American music; and in literature as heir to his realist, naturalist, and modernist forebears--affected his mature literary productions, including his own careful molding of his literary reputation. They present us with a man negotiating the difficult sociopolitical, intellectual, and artistic terrain facing African Americans as America was increasingly forced to confront its own failures with regard to the promise of the American dream to its diverse populations. These wide-ranging historical essays, along with a brief biography and an illustrated chronology, provide a concise yet authoritative discussion of a twentieth-century American writer whose continued presence on the stage of American and world literature and culture is now assured.

About this title

About the Author

Steven C. Tracy is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195152514
• ISBN 13: 9780195152517
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 294
• Editor: Tracy Steven C.