Within the Circle

Within the Circle

An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present

  • Author: Mitchell, Angelyn
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822315360
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822399889
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 1994
  • Month: November
  • Pages: 544
  • DDC: 810.9/896073
  • Language: English
Within the Circle is the first anthology to present the entire spectrum of twentieth-century African American literary and cultural criticism. It begins with the Harlem Renaissance, continues through civil rights, the Black Arts Movement, and on into contemporary debates of poststructuralist and black feminist theory. Drawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains in her introduction the importance for those "within the circle" of African American literature to examine their own works and to engage this critical canon.
The essays in this collection—many of which are not widely available today—either initiated or gave critical definition to specific periods or movements of African American literature. They address issues such as integration, separatism, political action, black nationalism, Afrocentricity, black feminism, as well as the role of art, the artist, the critic, and the audience. With selections from Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, W. E. B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Barbara Smith, Alice Walker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and many others, this definitive collection provides a dynamic model of the cultural, ideological, historical, and aesthetic considerations in African American literature and literary criticism.
A major contribution to the study of African American literature, this volume will serve as a foundation for future work by students and scholars. Its importance will be recognized by all those interested in modern literary theory as well as general readers concerned with the African American experience.

Selections by (partial list): Houston A. Baker, Jr., James Baldwin, Sterling Brown, Barbara Christian, W. E. B. DuBois, Ralph Ellison, LeRoi Jones, Sarah Webster Fabio, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W. Lawrence Hogue, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alain Locke, Deborah E. McDowell, Toni Morrison, J. Saunders Redding, George Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Robert B. Stepto, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Mary Helen Washington, Richard Wright

  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction: Voices Within the Circle: A Historical Overview of African American Literary Criticism
  • I. The Harlem Renaissance
    • The New Negro - Alain Locke
    • The Negro in American Literature - William Stanley Braithwaite
    • The Gift of Laughter - Jessie Fauset
    • The Negro-Art Hokum - George S. Schuyler
    • The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain - Langston Hughes
    • Criteria of Negro Art - W.E.B. DuBois
    • Our Literary Audience - Sterling A. Brown
    • Characteristics of Negro Expression - Zora Neale Hurston
  • II. Humanistic/Ethical Criticism and the Protest Tradition
    • Blueprint for Negro Writing - Richard Wright
    • American Negro Literature - J. Saunders Redding
    • What White Publishers Won't Print - Zora Neale Hurston
    • New Poets - Margaret Walker
    • Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity - Ralph Ellison
    • Everybody's Protest Novel - James Baldwin
    • Integration and Race Literature - Arthur P. Davis
  • III. The Black Arts Movement
    • The Myth of a "Negro Literature" - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)
    • Ethnic Impact in American Literature: Reflections on a Course - George E. Kent
    • The Black Arts Movement - Larry Neal
    • Towards a Black Aesthetic - Hoyt W. Fuller
    • Cultural Strangulation: Black Literature and the White Aesthetic - Addison Gayle, ]r.
    • Toward a Definition: Black Poetry of the Sixties (After LeRoi Jones) - Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti)
    • Tripping with Black Writing - Sarah Webster Fabio
  • IV. Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and the African American Critic
    • Preface to Blackness: Text and Pretext - Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
    • I Rose and Found My Voice: Narration, Authentication, and Authorial Control in Four Slave Narratives - Robert B. Stepto
    • Generational Shifts and the Recent Criticism of Afro-American Literature - Houston A. Baker, Jr.
    • Literary Production: A Silence in Afro-American Critical Practice - W. Lawrence Hogue
    • The Race for Theory - Barbara Christian
    • Appropriative Gestures: Theory and Afro-American Literary Criticism - Michael Awkward
    • Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature - Toni Morrison
  • V. Gender, Theory, and African American Feminist Criticism
    • In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens - Alice Walker
    • Toward a Black Feminist Criticism - Barbara Smith
    • New Directions for Black Feminist Criticism - Deborah E. McDowell
    • "The Darkened Eye Restored:" Notes Toward a Literary History of Black Women - Mary Helen Washington
    • Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book - Hortense J. Spillers
    • Gender and Afro-Americanist Literary Theory and Criticism - Valerie Smith
    • But What Do We Think We're Doing Anyway: The State of Black Feminist Criticism(s) or My Version of a Little Bit of History - Barbara Christian
    • Some Implications of Womanist Theory - Sherley Anne Williams
  • Useful Sources for Related Reading
  • Acknowledgment of Copyrights
  • About the Critics
  • Index of Selected Names

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