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Author Langley, April C. E., author

Title The Black aesthetic unbound : theorizing the dilemma of eighteenth-century African American literature / April C.E. Langley
Published Columbus : The Ohio State University Press, [2008]
©2008

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Description 1 online resource (xiv, 210 pages)
Contents The dilemma of a ghost : early African American literature and its mournings/moorings -- What a difference a "way" makes : Wheatley's ways of knowing -- Kaleidoscopic re-memory in Equiano's Interesting narrative : shifting the lens to replace the landscapes -- Reading "others" in eighteenth-century Afro-British American literature : the promise and the dilemma of new ways of reading
Summary During the era of the slave trade, more than 12 million Africans were brought as slaves to the Americas. Their memories, ideas, beliefs, and practices would forever reshape its history and cultures. April C.E. Langley's The Black Aesthetic Unbound exposes the dilemma of the literal, metaphorical, and rhetorical question, "What is African in African American literature?" Confronting the undeniable imprints of West African culture and consciousness in early black writing such as Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative or Phillis Wheatley's poetry, the author conceives eighteenth-century Black Experience to be literally and figuratively encompassing and inextricably linked to Africa, Europe, and America. Consequently, this book has three aims: to locate the eighteenth century as the genesis of the cultural and historical movements which mark twentieth-century black aestheticism--known as the Black Aesthetic; to analyze problematic associations of African identity as manifested in an essentialized Afro-America; and to study the relationship between specific West African modes of thought and expression and the emergence of a black aesthetic in eighteenth-century North America. By exploring how Senegalese, Igbo, and other West African traditions provide striking new lenses for reading poetry and prose by six significant writers, Langley offers a fresh perspective on this important era in our literary history. Ultimately, the author confronts the difficult dilemma of how to use diasporic, syncretic, and vernacular theories of Black culture to think through the massive cultural transformations wrought by the Middle Passage
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-197) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784 -- Criticism and interpretation
Equiano, Olaudah, 1745-1797. Interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano.
Aidoo, Ama Ata, 1942-2023. Dilemma of a ghost
SUBJECT Aidoo, Ama Ata, 1942- Dilemma of a ghost
Equiano, Olaudah, 1745- Interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano
Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784 -- Criticism and interpretation
Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784 fast
Interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equiano (Equiano, Olaudah) fast
Subject American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism
American literature -- African influences
American literature -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- History and criticism
American literature -- Revolutionary period, 1775-1783 -- History and criticism
American literature -- 1783-1850 -- History and criticism
Aesthetics, Black.
Aesthetics, Black
American literature
American literature -- African American authors
American literature -- African influences
American literature -- Colonial period
American literature -- Revolutionary period (United States)
Literatur
Schwarze
Ästhetik
Littérature américaine -- Auteurs noirs.
USA
Schwärze
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book