The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism

ISBN-13: 9780195136470 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 352 str.

Jr. Henry Louis Gates

Opis

Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative" and in The Washington Post Book World as "brilliantly original," Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey is a groundbreaking work that illuminates the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature. It elaborates a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself.
Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, Gates uncovers a unique system for interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. Exploring the process of signification in black American life and literature by analyzing the transmission and revision of various signifying figures, Gates provides an extended analysis of what he calls the "Talking Book," a central trope in early slave narratives that virtually defines the tradition of black American letters. Gates uses this critical framework to examine several major works of African-American literature--including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo--revealing how these works signify on the black tradition and on each other.
This superb 25th-Anniversary Edition features a new preface by Gates that reflects on the impact of the book and its relevance for today's society as well as a new afterword written by noted critic W. T. J. Mitchell.

Recenzje

Eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative, challenging ... Gates gives black literature room to breathe, invents interpretive frameworks that enable us to experience black writing rather than label it in terms of theme or ideology. From this perspective his book is a generous, long-awaited gift ... Like great novels that force us to view the world differently, Mr. Gates' compelling study suggests new ways of seeing.

O autorze

Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Havard University; Editor-in-Chief, Oxford American Studies Center. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 'Skip' is one of the most powerful academic voices in America. In 1997 Gates was voted one of Time Magazine's '25 Most influential Americans'. He is most recognised for his extensive research of African American history and literature, and for developing and expanding the African American Studies program at Harvard University. The first black to have received a Ph.D. from Cambridge, Gates is the author of many books, articles, essays and reviews, and has received numerous awards and honorary degrees. Gates who has displayed an endless dedication to bringing African- American culture into the public, has co-authored, co-edited and produced some of the most comprehensive African-American reference materials in the country.