Reading Africa into American literature : epics, fables, and gothic tales / Keith Cartwright.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cartwright, Keith, 1960-
Language:English
Published: Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, [2002], ©2002.
Subjects:
American literature > African influences.
American literature > African American authors > History and criticism.
African literature > Appreciation > United States.
American literature > History and criticism.
Gothic revival (Literature) > United States.
Fables, American > History and criticism.
African Americans in literature.
Africa > In literature.
Slavery in literature.
Ethics in literature.
Physical Description:270 pages ; 24 cm
Format: Book
Contents:
  • pt. I. Epic impulses/narratives of ancestry
  • Imperial mother wit, gumbo erotics: from Sunjata to The souls of Black folk
  • Of root figures and buggy jiving: Toomer, Hurston, and Ellison
  • Myth-making, mother-child-ness, and epic renamings: Malcolm X, Kunta Kinte, and Milkman Dead
  • pt. II. Bound cultures/the creolization of Dixie
  • "Two heads fighting": African roots, geechee/gombo tales
  • Creole self-fashioning: Joel Chandler Harris's "other fellow"
  • Searching for spiritual soil: milk bonds and the "maumer tongue"
  • pt. III. Shadows of Africans/gothic representations
  • The spears of the party of the merciful: Senegambian Muslims, scriptural mercy, and plantation slavery
  • Babo and bras coupé: malign machinations, gothic plots
  • "Never once but like ripples": on boomeranging trumps, rememory, and the novel as medium.