Sign-In
Cart
We Wear The Mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Politics of Representative Reality
Paperback
Literary CriticismPoetry Criticism
ISBN13: 9781606353790
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: Dec 18 2018
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.89
Height: 0.64 Width: 6.13 Depth: 9.25
Language: English
A prolific nineteenth-century author, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African American poet to gain national recognition. Praised by Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Frederick Douglass, who called him the most promising colored man in America, Dunbar intrigued readers and literary critics with his depictions of African Americans' struggle to overcome a legacy of slavery and prejudice. His remarkably large body of work--he wrote eleven volumes of poetry, four short story collections, five novels, three librettos, and a play before his death at thirty-three--draws on the oral storytelling traditions of his ex-slave mother as well as his unconventional education at an all-white public school to explore the evolving identity of the black community and its place in post-Civil War America.
Willie Harrell has assembled a collection of essays on Dunbar's work that builds on the research published over the last two decades. Employing an array of approaches to Dunbar's poetic creations, these essays closely examine the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. They situate Dunbar's work in relation to the issues of advancement popular during the Reconstruction era and against the racial stereotypes proliferating in the early twentieth century while demonstrating its relevance to contemporary literary studies.
We Wear the Mask will appeal to scholars and students of African American literature and poetry, as well as those interested in one of the most celebrated and widely taught African American authors.
Also in
Poetry Criticism
The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry
Laux, Dorianne
Addonizio, Kim
Paperback
Letters to a Young Poet: With the Letters to Rilke from the ''Young Poet''
Kappus, Franz Xaver
Searls, Damion
Rilke, Rainer Maria
Hardcover
Faeries, Sprites & Malevolent Spirits: An Anthology of Classic Poetry & Stories
Thorne, Aurora
Hardcover
Poem a Day: 366 Poems, Old and New - One for Each Day of the Year
McCosker, Karen
Albery, Nicolas
Paperback
Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage Into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku
Goldberg, Natalie
Hardcover
Leaves of Grass: The Complete 1855 and 1891-92 Editions: A Library of America Paperback Classic
Whitman, Walt
Paperback
Poetry from Spaceship Earth: Empire and Ecology in Post-1945 American Poetry
Rahimtoola, Samia
Paperback
The Enclosures of Free Verse: Racializing Poetic Form in the Modernist Era
Kappeler, Erin Joyce
Paperback
The Answer / La Respuesta (Expanded Edition): Including Sor Filotea's Letter and New Selected Poems
de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés
Paperback