 |
[email protected] |
 |
3275638434 |
 |
 |
| Paper Publishing WeChat |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Ralph Ellison’s Literary Criticism
WANG Yu-kuo
Full-Text PDF
XML 1192 Views
DOI:10.17265/2159-5836/2016.01.005
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China
Ralph Ellison published many articles and speeches on various topics before and after his masterpiece Invisible Man was published. They have been collected in Shadow and Act, Going to the Territory, and The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (posthumously), and Shadow and Act has been selected as one of the most influential books in non-fiction with his Invisible Man in fiction which evokes more academic interests. This paper attempts to take a closer look at Ellison’s literary criticism, focusing mainly on his response to the debate of “protest novel”, his reconsideration of the Negro American writings, and his analysis of how the mainstream American writers, such as Mark Twain, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway, deal with the racial subjects and represent them in their creation. Owing to the strong belief in the ideals of American democracy, Ellison highlights the individuality rather than the stereotyped characteristics of the Negro people, and transcends the fixed category of black and white, for all good literature tells the same story: to be true and honest.
protest novel, Negro American writing, racial representation
Butler, R. J. (2004). Probing the lower frequencies: Fifty years of Ellison criticism. In Steven C. Tracy (Ed.), A historical guide to Ralph Ellison (pp. 233-260). New York: Oxford University Press.
Ellison, R. (1995). The collected essays of Ralph Ellison. J. F. Callahan, (Ed.). New York: The Modern Library.
Howe, I. (1963). Black boys and native sons. In J. F. Trimmer (Ed.), A casebook on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (pp. 150-169). New York: T. Y. Crowell.
Jackson, L. (2002). Ralph Ellison: Emergence of genius. Athens & London: The University of Georgia Press.
Judy, R. A. T. (2003). Ralph Ellison—The next fifty years. Boundary 2, 30(2), 1-4.
Norris, K. (Ed.). (2014). Street lit: Representing the urban landscape. Lanham•Toronto•Plymouth, UK: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
O’Meally, R. G. (2004). The rules of magic: Hemingway as Ellison’s “Ancestor”. In J. F. Callahan (Ed.), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man: A casebook (pp. 149-187). New York: Oxford University Press.
Porter, H. A. (2001). Jazz country: Ralph Ellison in America. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.
Posnock, R. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge companion to Ralph Ellison. New York: Cambridge University Press.