English Language and Literature Commons^™

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 …

Black Folk Culture In The Fiction Of The Harlem Renaissance, Judy Schreiner

Culminating Projects in English

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s was a period which fostered the development of a black literature that drew heavily upon the black folk culture. Novels representative of this literature are Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes, One Way to Heaven by Countee Cullen, Home to Harlem by Claude McKay, The Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher, God Sends Sunday by Arna Bontemps, and Jonah’s Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston.

Various aspects of black folk music are presented in the fiction. The traditions of minstrelsy are utilized in characterizations of a city dandy and two endmen. Dance traditions are …

Ahab’S Humanities, Marian Barger

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick Captain Peleg declares, “Ahab has his humanities.” Although many facets of Ahab’s character have been explored, his humanities have not been discussed at length. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “humanities” as “human attributes; traits or touches of human nature or feeling; points that concern man, or appeal to the human sensibilities.” This definition is vague; the specific qualities which should be included must be enumerated, since the humanities of one culture may not be the same as those of another. Ahab has been associated with two cultures – The Western, Christian tradition and the Near …

James Baldwin, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

James Baldwin is one of America's best known and most controversial writers. If there is some figurative truth in his declarations "Nobody Knows My Name" and "No Name in the Street," on a realistic level practically everyone knows his name, from people on the street to scholars in the most prestigious universities-and they all respond to him. Those responses are as diverse and as antithetical as the respondents. Indeed, there is little unanimity in the criticism of James Baldwin: some view him as a prophet preaching love and salvation, others as a soothsayer forecasting death and destruction; some see him …

Tuning In The Boiler Room And The Cotton Patch: New Directions In The Study Of Afro-American Folklore, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

One of the first problems in the study of folklore is, of course, the collection of materials. In almost every area of Black folklore, the collecting was initiated by whites. As I have noted elsewhere, "Black folk forms seem to thrive quietly and abashedly in the Black community as items of private enjoyment and public shame until they are ' discovered ' by whites who legitimize them for the American public-Black and white. Such has been the case with the general folk tales (the animal tales, the etiological myths, the Slave John tales, etc.), the spirituals, and the blues. 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 …

Daddy May Bring Home Some Bread, But He Don't Cut No Ice: The Economic Plight Of The Father Figure In Black American Literature, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

This tale is a forceful and eloquent commentary on the American economic system which conspires to make it impossible for the Black man to acquire anything more than a mere biscuit, no matter how he plays the economic game. If he plays according to the rules, the rules are changed rather than reward him with his just due. If he fails to play according to the rules, others are rewarded for their efforts and he is punished for his failure. He's damned if he does, and he's damned if he doesn't. Everyone knows enough about the history of this country …

The Female Image In The Caldecott Medal Award Books, Patricia Lee Brighton Roberts

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

PROBLEM: Millions of children read and view the Caldecott Winners each year There are no published studies regarding the possible stereo-typing of the role of the human, animal and inanimate female image in the texts and illustrations of these 37 books.

Purpose: The. investigation ·was conducted to determine the extent the total population of the Caldecott books did stereo-type the role of the human, animal and inanimate female image.

Procedures: The investigation was completed in four steps: (1) First, a panel of sociologists determined the content validity of the definitions used in the hypothesis; (2) Second, a Content Analysis Form …

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 …

An Examination Of The Influence Of August Strindberg Upon Eugene O'Neill, Mary Emily Parsons Edwards

Master's Theses

Eugene O'Neill made no effort to hide the names of those writers and literary works which were important to him, and most of his biographers cite the fact that from the commencement of his playwrighting [sic] career O'Neill was influenced by the Swedish writer August Strindberg. O 'Neill himself was, in fact, one of the first to call attention to the kinship between his work and that of his "Master." In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he indicated that he was delighted to have an opportunity to discuss the debt Ameri­can drama owed to the modern drama of Europe, and, …

Folk Elements In The Fiction Of James Still, Edith Walker

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This study attempts to complement earlier studies of Still’s literary art such as that of Dean Cadle and Katherine Craf by pointing out the integral use of folk elements in his fiction. The methodology combined field studies with investigation of the works of folklorists and historians and novelists whose writings center around the same general region as do those of Still

For the purposes of this study “folk elements” will denote the orally transmitted traditions of the common people of a particular region. In this case, the “folk” are a rural people who have remained relatively stable for several generations …

Ellen Glasgow's Virginia Dream, Catherine Carpenter Garrett

Theses & Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

American Negro Autobiographies, George E. F. Hall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to evaluate a select group of American Negro autobiographies in order to determine their quality as a literary genre. For that purpose the autobiographies from the fields of race leadership, writing, and entertainment were selected for evaluation.

In the field of race leadership the following autobiographies were analyzed: Father Henson, by Josiah Henson; The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, by Frederick Douglass; Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington; and Dusk of Dawn, by W. E. B. DuBois.

In the field of writing the autobiographies analyzed were: Along This Way, by James Weldon …

A Navaho Myth: The Hero Twins (A Psychoanalytic Evaluation), Allen S. Ehrlich

Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science

THE MYTH. Changing Woman (or Turquoise Woman) gives birth to twins, the Sun being their father. The older boy was Nayenesgani the Slayer, and the younger was called Child of Water. The Sun warned his wife Changing Woman to hide her sons from the giant Yeitso. She dug a hole in the floor, and every time she heard Yeitso coming she put them in it and covered the hole with a flat stone. The great giant came often for he was in love with her and jealous of the Sun, but she kept the little ones hidden. The children grow …

The Development Of Race Pride In American Negro Poetry, Sister Mary Boniface Adams

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation

The study of the development of race pride in the poetry of American Negro seeks to trace the though of the Negro from his entry into America to the present, including the important periods of history which affected this development and his reaction to them.

Twentieth Century Negro Poets, Sheila Higgins

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

According to Matthew Arnold an open mind is one of the chief essentials for true literary criticism. One is impressed by the truthfulness of this statement when he seeks to evaluate Negro poetry.

The term, Negro poetry, has several interpretations. In its most general sense, the one in which it is used in this paper, it means poetry written by Negroes on any subject. In a more restricted sense it refers to poetry that contains allusions, rhythms, sentiments and idioms more or less peculiar to the Negro. In its narrowest meaning it refers to poetry of racial protest and self-exhortation. …

The Kentucky Novels Of James Lane Allen, Hessie Brister Ivey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Kentucky, following in the footsteps of her parent state, Virginia, has given to America some of her most distinguished statesmen. She gave to the Confederacy its only president, Jefferson Davis, and to the Federal Union its war president, Abraham Lincoln. Housed in a noble pile of imperishable granite, on its exact original site, near Hodgenville, the humble log cabin in which Lincoln was born is now preserved as a national shrine. At Fairview a towering obelisk marks the birthplace of Jefferson Davis.

These two statesmen were born, one year between them, of the same pioneering stock. One moved north of …