Increased interest in the role of women and minorities in establishing the canon of American literature has led to renewed interest in Uncle Tom's Cabin. The essays in this volume set out to provide contemporary readers with a critical and historical interpretation of the novel that reflects the best of recent scholarship. In his introduction Eric J. Sundquist attempts to show that Uncle Tom's Cabin boldly takes issue with both proslavery arguments and prevailing prejudices among abolitionists, employing the forms of popular melodrama and heated rhetoric to carry its complex argument. The individual essays examine the influence of Stowe's novel on the characterization of women in the American novel and on later women writers, the role of women in the antislavery movement, the literary exchanges between Stowe and her contemporaries; Uncle Tom's Cabin and the tradition of the Gothic novel, and the characterizations of blacks in this novel and in later works.
In The Hammers of Creation, Eric J. Sundquist analyzes the powerful role played by folk culture in three major African-American novels of the early twentieth century: James Weldon Johnson's The Autobi
Now available in paperback, ?one of the best short books we have on the ideas of racial equality” (George Bornstein, Times Literary Supplement) In this assessment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous 1
This is a 1993 collection of fourteen essays by America's leading historians and literary critics which evaluates the importance of Frederick Douglass in his own day and on into the twentieth century. As a result of the research and interpretation in both literary and historical studies, Frederick Douglass has assumed a central place in the revival of interest in the multicultural study of American literature. His autobiographies are fundamental case studies of the slave narratives that form the basis of African-American culture. His remarkable achievements as abolitionist orator, journalist, and writer of fiction and historical essays have made him a pivotal figure in a variety of disciplines. The essays examine Douglass' own views on gender and class, as well as racial issues, and place his thought and writings in the context of debates about slavery and freedom that dominated the intellectual landscape of nineteenth-century America.
The flourishing of pre-Civil War literature known as the American Renaissance occurred in a volatile context of national expansion and sectional strife. Canonical writers such as Herman Melville, Walt
02 A unique supplement to one of the most important African American novels of this century. As Invisible Man chronicles the major moments of African American life during the first half of the twentie
In a culture deeply divided along ethnic lines, the idea that the relationship between blacks and Jews was once thought special--indeed, critical to the cause of civil rights--might seem strange. Yet
This powerful book argues that white culture in America does not exist apart from black culture. The revolution of the rights of man that established this country collided long ago with the system of
Includes the entire text of "I Have A Dream"“I have a dream”—no words are more widely recognized, or more often repeated, than those called out from the steps of the Lincoln Memoria
The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois Reader encompasses the whole of Du Bois's long and multifaceted writing career from the 1890s through the early 1960s. The volume selects key essays and longer works that p
For the last decade scholars have been questioning the idea that the Holocaust was not talked about in any way until well into the 1970s. After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence is the fi
For the last decade scholars have been questioning the idea that the Holocaust was not talked about in any way until well into the 1970s. After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence is the fi
