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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Two Steps From The Blues: Creating Discourse And Constructing Canons In Blues Criticism, John M. Dougan
Two Steps From The Blues: Creating Discourse And Constructing Canons In Blues Criticism, John M. Dougan
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation examines the development of blues criticism in its myriad forms from the 1920s to 1990s, its role in the emergence of a blues discourse and history, and the codification of a blues canon. I analyze blues discourse principally as the creation of critics, historians, and musicologists, but also as the result of series of complex, imbricated relationships among writers, musicians, fans, record collectors, and independent entrepreneurs.;Beginning in the 1920s, I outline a pre-history of blues discourse by examining the metamorphosis of the blues as a cultural text shaped by the folklore scholarship, criticism and reportage in the popular …
The Slave In The Swamp: Disrupting The Plantation Narrative, William Tynes Cowan
The Slave In The Swamp: Disrupting The Plantation Narrative, William Tynes Cowan
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
In nineteenth-century plantation literature, the runaway slave in the swamp was a recurrent "bogeyman" whose presence challenged myths of the plantation system. By escaping to the swamps, the runaway, or "maroon," gained an invisibility that was more threatening to the institution than open conflict. The chattel system was dependent upon an exercise of will upon the body of the enslaved, but slaves who asserted control over their bodies, by removing them to the swamps, claimed definition over the Self. In part, the proslavery plantation novel served to transform that image of the maroon from its untouchable, abstract state to a …
Katherine Anne Porter And Her Publishers, Alexandra Subramanian
Katherine Anne Porter And Her Publishers, Alexandra Subramanian
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This biographical dissertation focuses upon Katherine Anne Porter's relationship with her literary agent, Cyrilly Abels, and her editors and publishers, Donald Brace and Seymour Lawrence, who were associated with Harcourt, Brace and Atlantic-Little, Brown respectively. The study is based upon the thousands of pages of correspondence between Porter and her professional associates housed in the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter at the University of Maryland. Porter's professional alliances are placed within the context of nineteenth and twentieth century publishing history and within a long tradition of idiosyncratic author editor/agent dependencies that can be traced throughout American literary history.;The heart of …
"Prologue To A Life": Dorothy West's Harlem Renaissance Years, 1926--1934, Karen Rose Veselits
"Prologue To A Life": Dorothy West's Harlem Renaissance Years, 1926--1934, Karen Rose Veselits
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation is a bio-critical study of writer Dorothy West (1907--1998). It focuses on her apprenticeship in Harlem from 1926--1934 during the literary renaissance and lays the groundwork for a biography, long overdue. West's career extends from the Harlem Renaissance to the end of the 20 th century, but she has not received the critical recognition her work merits. The study of West's early work illuminates her later work, The Living Is Easy (1948) and The Wedding (1995); it demonstrates the continuity throughout her writing and makes clear that she struggled with the same themes and issues repeatedly during her …