By examining African America's contested relation to the intellectual and literary forms of white culture, Sundquist reconstructs the main lines of American literary tradition from the decades before the Civil War through the early twentieth century. An opening discussion of Nat Turner's "Confessions," recorded by a white man, Thomas Gray, establishes a paradigm for the complexity of meanings that Sundquist uncovers in American literary texts. Focusing on Frederick Douglass's autobiographical books, Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno," Martin Delany's novel "Blake; or the Huts of America," Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson," Charles Chesnutt's fiction, and W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk" and "Darkwater," Sundquist considers each text against a rich background of history, law, literature, politics, religion, folklore, music, and dance. These readings lead to insights into components of the culture atlarge: slavery as it intersected with postcolonial revolutionary ideology; literary representations of the legal and political foundations of segregation; and the transformation of elements of African and antebellum folk consciousness into the public forms of American literature.
"Almost certainly the finest book yet written on race and American literature," writes Arnold Rampersad of Princeton University. "To Wake the Nations" "amounts to a startlingly penetrating commentary on American culture, a commentary that should have a powerful impact on areas far beyond the texts investigated here."
Or split into 4x interest-free payments of 25% on orders over R50
Learn more
By examining African America's contested relation to the intellectual and literary forms of white culture, Sundquist reconstructs the main lines of American literary tradition from the decades before the Civil War through the early twentieth century. An opening discussion of Nat Turner's "Confessions," recorded by a white man, Thomas Gray, establishes a paradigm for the complexity of meanings that Sundquist uncovers in American literary texts. Focusing on Frederick Douglass's autobiographical books, Herman Melville's "Benito Cereno," Martin Delany's novel "Blake; or the Huts of America," Mark Twain's "Pudd'nhead Wilson," Charles Chesnutt's fiction, and W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk" and "Darkwater," Sundquist considers each text against a rich background of history, law, literature, politics, religion, folklore, music, and dance. These readings lead to insights into components of the culture atlarge: slavery as it intersected with postcolonial revolutionary ideology; literary representations of the legal and political foundations of segregation; and the transformation of elements of African and antebellum folk consciousness into the public forms of American literature.
"Almost certainly the finest book yet written on race and American literature," writes Arnold Rampersad of Princeton University. "To Wake the Nations" "amounts to a startlingly penetrating commentary on American culture, a commentary that should have a powerful impact on areas far beyond the texts investigated here."
Imprint | Harvard University Press |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | July 1998 |
Availability | Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days |
First published | July 1998 |
Authors | Eric J. Sundquist |
Dimensions | 235 x 162 x 44mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Paperback |
Pages | 720 |
Edition | New Ed |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-674-89331-3 |
Barcode | 9780674893313 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-674-89331-X |