Title:	Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt
Authors:	Susan Prothro, Wright Ernestine Pickens, Glass
Keywords:	Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell), 1858–1932—Criticism and interpretation
Issue Date:	2010
Publisher:	Mississippi
Description:	Charles Chesnutt’s writing is informed by a uniquely historical perspective, one that is often mistaken for what it is not—a subordination of “all things” African American to all things white. On the other hand, Chesnutt’s imaginative historicizing is frequently dismissed as superficial when readers fail to recognize what it is—an often ironic or even harshly satiric attack on notions of white superiority balanced by an objective rendering of the human qualities, good and bad, of whites and all hues of African Americans. In sum, the richness of Chesnutt’s writing requires a variety of critical approaches, and the essays in the collection rise to the challenge by looking at his works through a number of perspectives— intertextual, signifying/discourse analysis, narratological, formal, psychoanalytical, new historical, reader response, and performative, for example—all of which serve to recover the significance of Chesnutt’s works in their on-going historical and literary contexts. The essays in this collection, grown out of special sessions on Chesnutt at Modern Language Association, American Literature Association, and College Language Association conferences, are included both because of their original approaches to Chesnutt’s work and because of their illuminating intersection with each other, an exchange that serves to expand the understanding of Chesnutt’s ideologies, his artistry, and his place in social and literary history while uncovering new paths of inquiry into Chesnutt scholarship
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/9726
ISBN:	978-1-60473-416-4
Appears in Collections:	African Studies

Items in DSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.