Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Place, Perception, And Identity In The Awakening, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

A charming house on a fashionable street in New Orleans, with furnishings "after the conventional type" and a yard kept "scrupulously neat" (931). An island paradise where the gulf melts "hazily into the blue of the horizon" (882) and acres of yellow chamomile reach out to plantations fragrant with lemon and orange trees. These two settings, which Kate Chopin uses in The Awakening, reflect two different ways of life. The first is structured and refined, the second is more natural. Life in New Orleans is lived according to a "programme" (932). Every Tuesday afternoon Edna Pontellier receives female callers, and …

City Folks In Hoot Owl Holler: Narrative Strategy In Lee Smith's Oral History, Suzanne W. Jones

English Faculty Publications

Over the years American writers have perceived Appalachia differently depending on how America has perceived itself. While those who have approved of the American way of life have looked down on mountain life, those who have disapproved have seen Appalachia as an alternative culture from which America might take a lesson (Appalachia, 65). In 1873 the journalist William Harney and the editors of Lippincott Magazine "discovered" Appalachia, and historian Henry Shapiro argues that since then America has thought of this mountainous portion of eight southern states as a discreet region, "in but not of America" (Appalachia, 4). In …

Bosom Buddies And Lonely Hearts, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

In Ossie Davis' Purlie Victorius, Ol' Cap'n nostalgically reminisces about the good old days when he enjoyed what he recollects as close loving relationships with Blacks. He recalls to Gitlow "how you and me growed up together. Had the same mammy - my mammy was your mother." And Gitlow responds, "Yessir! Bosom buddies." Despite the satire and irony with which Ossie Davis consciously invests this scene, it suggest to me another irony - one which Davis certainly did not intend - and that is that one of the images of the Black woman which has frequently been shared by …

[Introduction To] Vengeance And Justice: Crime And Punishment In The 19th Century American South, Edward L. Ayers

Bookshelf

Exploring the major elements of southern crime and punishment at a time that saw the formation of the fundamental patterns of class and race, Edward L. Ayers studies the inner workings of the police, prison, and judicial systems, and the nature of crime.

Zora Neale Hurston, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Some new information is occasionally being ferreted out that may help to cast additional light on some of these issues, but quite clearly Zora Neale Hurston will remain something of an enigma - too complex a figure to reach any easy conclusions about, except perhaps that she defies simple characterization. People responded to her (and still do) very emotionally: her detractors despise her bitterly; her defenders love her passionately. All agree that she was eccentric, colorful, entertaining, humorous, and unforgettable.

Perhaps the most crucial question to pose about her is why one of the most important figures in the Harlem …

"Aunt Sue's Stories": The Use Of Folklore In The Teaching Of Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This poem by Langston Hughes, one of America's most prolific poets, suggests the appeal of folklore to the young. Aunt Sue's stories inspire the response that every teacher of literature aspires to elicit from his students. I would like to suggest that the most natural thing in the world for the teacher is to capitalize on this appeal of folklore to help develop an interest in and an appreciation for recorded literature. Folklore can do much to help the student bridge the gap between his own world and what seems to many to be the alien world of Shakespeare. Our …

Following In Zora Neale Hurston's Dust Tracks: Autobiographical Notes By The Author Of Shuckin' And Jivin', Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

As I began to peruse collections and studies of black folklore, I found that although considerable work had been done from which I was l earning a great deal, there were some aspects of black folklore with which I was personally familiar (from my childhood in Charles City, Virginia, my college days in Petersburg, and my adult life in Richmond) that I had observed as influence in numerous literary works, particularly on temporary works, that were not included in the material was finding, or were not presented in anything even vaguely resembling the versions I knew and saw represented in …

Black Eve Or Madonna? A Study Of The Antithetical Views Of The Mother In Black American Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Within these two extreme views of woman - the mother who brings death and destruction versus the mother who brings life and salvation - where does the Black American mother stand? It seems to me that it would not be inappropriate to look at the literature, not as mere fiction, but rather as an interpretation and compilation of history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and a host of other areas. Thus the true literary artist reveals life more accurately and with more insight than any historical facts and statistical details, because he deals with the truth of the human heart, with the …

Wit And Humor In The Slave Narratives, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This passage suggests something of the nature of Black humor and the function it has served, not only in the slave narratives, but in the folk tales and throughout the history of recorded literature from William Wells Brown to Amiri Baraka. The life revealed in all of these sources is shown to often be alternately degrading and courageous, tragic and absurdly comic, hopeless and yet enduring; indeed that life could hardly ever be termed merely amusing. And the Black character, though he may be seen to laugh, can hardly be deemed carefree, unbothered, satisfied, even truly happy. Indeed the paradox …

In The Beginning: A New View Of Black American Etiological Tales, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

A substantial number of Black folktales may be designated as etiological "myths" in that they tend to focus on the world as it evolved and to frequently portray the role of God in explaining why the Negro is, to quote from one tale, "so messed up," why he is black, why he has big, ugly feet and hands, why his hair is kinky, and why he must remain a poor laborer in a rich society. The causes of all of these "inferior" traits of the Negro appear to be certain alleged defects in his character-his tardiness, his ignorance, his disobedience …

You Can't Go Home Again: James Baldwin And The South, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

James Baldwin, like innumerable other Black artists, has found that in his efforts to express the plight of the Black man in America, he has been forced to deal over and over again with that inescapable dilemma of the Black American - the lack of a sense of a positive self-identity. Time after time in his writings he has shown an awareness of the fact that identity contains, as Erik Erikson so accurately indicates, "a complementarity of past and future both in the individual and in society." Baldwin wrote in "Many Thousands Gone," "We cannot escape our origins, however hard …

Contemporary Militant Black Humor, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Witnessing the continued plight of their black brothers in America, noting the continued strength of racism in this country, and discouraged by the slowness and ineffectiveness of integration, they have become frustrated and completely disillusioned with the promise of American democracy. If Paul Laurence Dunbar might be said to reflect in some of his works the accommodationist views of the leading black spokesman of his times, Booker T. Washington; and if Langston Hughes might generally be viewed as advocating the thoughtful, rational methods of Martin Luther King and the N.A.A.C.P. with their disciplined social protest and their optimistic faith in …

Sentimentalism In Dreiser's Heroines, Carrie And Jennie, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Theodore Dreiser is usually hailed as a pioneer of American realism who freed American literature from Victorian restraints, from nineteenth century idealism and optimism, and from the ever-present moralizing of domestic sentimentalism. It is interesting to note, however, that this shockingly modern trailblazer not only stands at the dawn of a new era in literature, but also at the twilight of the old, for in Dreiser is a mixture of both the new realism and naturalism and the old sentimentalism that had dominated American literature from its inception.

The Diplomatic Mission Of Yancey, Rost And Mann: The Inadequacies Of Confederate Foreign Policy, 1861, Paul Zingg

Master's Theses

During the secession movement of January- February 1861, which culminated in the Montgomery Constitutional Convention, the young Confederate government established well-defined policy objectives for the purpose of securing European allies and material assistance. Basically these aims were three-fold: to secure recognition of the sovereign status of the Confederate states; to induce intervention by the European powers on the side of the Confederacy; and, after April, 1861, to gain a repudiation of the Union blockade from these same powers. Relying predominantly on the coercive power of cotton, the South began its quest for these objectives with diplomatic efforts directed at the …

James Barron Hope : Virginia's Poet-Laureate, Cullen S. Pitt

Master's Theses

Previous to the Civil War comparatively little literary work had been done in the south. Of course if we take into consideration all kinds of composition, such as narratives of adventure, diaries, histories, speeches, sermons and the like, we are forced to admit that the total amount was very large. But when we speak of literature in the higher and more restricted sense, we mean that which stimulates the imagination, awakens thought and aims to please as well as to instruct. And, using the word in this narrow and more restricted sense, it is quite evident that there had been …