Music in African American Fiction - Representing Music in African American Fiction

List of contents

I They Sang a Song of Triumph II Depths to Which Mere Sound Had No Business to Go III The Only True History of the Times IV The Length of the Music Was the Only Form

About the author

Robert H. Cataliotti

Summary

This is the first comprehensive historical analysis of how black music and musicians have been represented in the fiction of African American writers. It also examines how music and musicians in fiction have exemplified the sensibilities of African Americans and provided paradigms for an African American literary tradition.
The fictional representation of African American music by black authors is traced from the nineteenth century (William Wells Brown, Martin Delany, Pauline E. Hopkins, Paul Laurence Dunbar) through the early twentieth century and the Harlem Renaissance (James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston) to the 1940s and 50s (Richard Wright, Ann Petry, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison) and the 1960s and the Black Arts Movement (Margaret Walker, William Melvin Kelley, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Henry Dumas). In the century between Brown and Baraka, the representation of music in black fiction went through a dramatic metamorphosis. Music occupied a representative role in African American culture from which writers drew ideas and inspiration. The music provided a way out of a limited situation by offering a viable option to the strictures of racism. Individuals who overcome these limitations then become role models in the struggle toward equality. African American musical forms-for both artist and audience-also offerd a way of looking at the world, survival, and resistance. The black musician became a ritual leader. This study delineates how black writers have captured the spirit of the music that played such a pivotal role in African American culture. (Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1993; revised with new preface and index)

Product details

• Authors: Cataliotti, Robert H Cataliotti, Robert H. Cataliotti, Cataliotti Robert H.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 16.01.2019
• EAN: 9781138976597
• ISBN: 978-1-138-97659-7
• No. of pages: 272
• Series: Studies in African American History and Culture; Garland Studies on Industrial Productivity; Studies in African American History and Culture
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; USA, Ethnic Studies, Music, English, HISTORY / General, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: general, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Black & Asian Studies, Relating to African American / Black American people