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Title We wear the mask : Paul Laurence Dunbar and the politics of representative reality / edited by Willie J. Harrell Jr
Published Kent, Ohio : Kent State University Press, ©2010

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Description 1 online resource (xviii, 266 pages) : illustrations
Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE
Contents The poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the influence of African aesthetics: Dunbar's poems and the tradition of masking / Lena Ampadu -- National memory and the arts in Paul Laurence Dunbar's war poetry / Nassim W. Balestrini -- "Sing a song heroic": Paul Laurence Dunbar's mythic and poetic tribute to black soldiers / Sharon D. Raynor -- Minstrelsy and the dialect poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar / Elston L. Carr Jr. -- Dunbar, dialect, and narrative theory: subverted statements in Lyrics of lowly life / Megan M. Peabody -- Rhetorical accountability: Paul Laurence Dunbar's search for "representative" men / Coretta M. Pittman -- "Jump back, honey, jump back": reading Paul Laurence Dunbar in the context of the Century magazine / Mark Noonan -- The glamour of Paul Laurence Dunbar: racial uplift, masculinity, and Bohemia in the Nadir / Matt Sandler -- Kemble's figures and Dunbar's folks: picturing the work of graphic illustration in Dunbar's short fiction / Adam Sonstegard -- "We know de time is ouahs": the power of Christmas in the literature of Paul Laurence Dunbar / Amy Cummins -- Creating a representative community: identity in Paul Laurence Dunbar's In old plantation days / Willie J. Harrell Jr. -- Memory and repression in Paul Laurence Dunbar's The sport of the gods / Jeannine King -- A little something more than something else: Dunbar's colorist ambivalence in The sport of the gods / Dolores V. Sisco -- Mobile blacks and ubiquitous blues: urbanizing the African American discourses in Paul Laurence Dunbar's The sport of the gods / Michael P. Moreno -- "With myriad subtleties": Paul Laurence Dunbar's constructions of social identity in The sport of the gods / Jayne E. Waterman -- "Nemmine. You got to git somebody else to ring yo' ol' bell now": nigger Ed and the rhetoric of local color realism and racial protest in Dunbar's The fanatics / Willie J. Harrell Jr
Summary A prolific nineteenth-century author, Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African American poet to gain national recognition. Praised by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and Frederick Douglass, who called him "the most promising colored man in America," Dunbar intrigued readers and literary critics with his depictions of African Americans' struggle to overcome a legacy of slavery and prejudice. His remarkably large body of work--he wrote eleven volumes of poetry, four short story collections, five novels, three librettos, and a play before his death at thirty-three--draws on the oral storytelling traditions of his ex-slave mother as well as his unconventional education at an all-white public school to explore the evolving identity of the black community and its place in post--Civil War America. Willie Harrell has assembled a collection of essays on Dunbar's work that builds on the research published over the last two decades. Employing an array of approaches to Dunbar's poetic creations, these essays closely examine the self-motivated and dynamic effect of his use of dialect, language, rhetorical strategies, and narrative theory to promote racial uplift. They situate Dunbar's work in relation to the issues of advancement popular during the Reconstruction era and against the racial stereotypes proliferating in the early twentieth century while demonstrating its relevance to contemporary literary studies. We Wear the Mask will appeal to scholars and students of African American literature and poetry, as well as those interested in one of the most celebrated and widely taught African American authors
Notes OldControl:muse9781612775074
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872-1906 -- Language
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872-1906 -- Criticism and interpretation
SUBJECT Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872-1906. fast (OCoLC)fst00029843
Subject African Americans in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- African American.
African Americans in literature.
Language and languages.
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
Author Harrell, Willie J., Jr.
LC no. 2010000360
ISBN 9781612775074
1612775071