Word: afros
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...which it is recognizable. The literary arts present particular difficulties because their subject matter is about man, and no matter how radical one becomes one must always return back to universality and to man. Thus I must stick with man and his universality. At once, therefore, I recognize Afro-American literature to be universal in that it abides by the universal laws of literature and finds itself structured within the same general context of universal literature in that there is a classical period, a romantic period, etc. Yet it is particular since it arises out of a context that...
...Afro-American literature has developed as most any other literature within the Western world. In it one can see a classical period in which the works of Phillis Wheatley were most conspicuous. In Williams Wells Brown's Clotel we see the emanation of a Romantic tradition, and in his case he used arguments made by Voltaire and Rousseau to buttress his condemnation of slavery. In Charles Chestnutt's work we see a literature of Realism, and in the work of Richard Wright we see aspects of Naturalism and, later on, attempts at existentialist ideas. In Toni Morrison we find...
This is part one of an article adapted from a speech given in the Cambridge Forum series this month. Part two will appear on this page next week. Selwyn R. Cudjoe is assistant professor of Afro-American Studies
What then is Afro-American Literature? To begin, it is a manifestation of the ethnic and emotional consciousness of Afro-American peoples. Our aesthetic concern is about a particular kind of man, the Afro-American man and woman, who have emerged under particular historical circumstances and whose aesthetic sensibilities were fashioned by a particular geography, a particular social setting and a particular type of economic arrangement...
...concern as a teacher and scholar is to find out what are the particular aesthetic forms which are used to capture the particularity of Afro-American man and woman in literature, through the explication of literary text. At once, therefore, I am concerned about the dialectical interrelationship of form and content, bearing in mind the Hegelian notion of the impenetrable nature of form and content, and the manner in which each penetrates the other...