Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt write by Matthew Wilson. This book was released on 2009-09-18. Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Charles W. Chesnutt (1858–1932), critically acclaimed for his novels, short stories, and essays, was one of the most ambitious and influential African American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today recognized as a major innovator of American fiction, Chesnutt is an important contributor to deromanticizing trends in post–Civil War southern literature, and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who wrote about race in American life. Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt is the first study to focus exclusively on Chesnutt's novels. Examining the three published in Chesnutt's lifetime—The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream—as well as his posthumously published novels, this study explores the dilemma of a black writer who wrote primarily for a white audience. Throughout, Matthew Wilson analyzes the ways in which Chesnutt crafted narratives for his white readership and focuses on how he attempted to infiltrate and manipulate the feelings and convictions of that audience. Wilson pays close attention to the genres in which Chesnutt was working and also to the social and historical context of the novels. In articulating the development of Chesnutt's career, Wilson shows how Chesnutt's views on race evolved. By the end of his career, he felt that racial differences were not genetically inherent, but social constructions based on our background and upbringing. Finally, the book closely examines Chesnutt's unpublished manuscripts that did not deal with race. Even in these works, in which African Americans are only minor characters, Wilson finds Chesnutt engaged with the conundrum of race and reveals him as one of America's most significant writers on the subject.
Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt
Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt write by Matthew Wilson. This book was released on 2009. Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. An examination of race and audience in an American innovator's writings
Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt
Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt write by Matthew Wilson. This book was released on 2004. Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932), critically acclaimed for his novels, short stories, and essays, was one of the most ambitious and influential African American writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today recognized as a major innovator of American fiction, Chesnutt is an important contributor to de-romanticizing trends in post-Civil War Southern literature, and a singular voice among turn-of-the-century realists who wrote about race in American life. Whiteness in the Novels of Charles W. Chesnutt is the first study to focus exclusively on Chesnutt's novels. Examining the three published in Chesnutt's lifetime-The House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow of Tradition, and The Colonel's Dream-as well as his posthumously published novels, this study explores the dilemma of a black writer who wrote primarily for a white audience. Throughout, Matthew Wilson analyzes the ways in which Chesnutt crafted narratives for his white readership and focuses on how he attempted to infiltrate and manipulate the feelings and convictions of that audience. Wilson pays close attention to the genres in which Chesnutt was working and also to the social and historical context of the novels. In articulating the development of Chesnutt's career, Wilson shows how Chesnutt's views on race evolved. By the end of his career, he felt that racial differences were not genetically inherent, but social constructions based on our background and upbringing. Finally, the book closely examines Chesnutt's unpublished manuscripts that did not deal with race. Even in these works, in which African Americans are only minor characters, Wilson finds Chesnutt engaged with the conundrum of race and reveals him as one of America's most significant writers on the subject. Matthew Wilson is a professor of humanities and writing at Penn State University, Harrisburg. He is the editor of Charles W. Chesnutt's Paul Marchand, F.M.C. (University Press of Mississippi).
Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt
Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt write by Susan Prothro Wright. This book was released on 2010-06-17. Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt is a collection that reevaluates Chesnutt's deft manipulation of the "passing" theme to expand understanding of the author's fiction and nonfiction. Nine contributors apply a variety of theories---including intertextual, signifying/discourse analysis, narratological, formal, psychoanalytical, new historical, reader response, and performative frameworks---to add richness to readings of Chesnutt's works. Together the essays provide convincing evidence that "passing" is an intricate, essential part of Chesnutt's writing, and that it appears in all the genres he wielded: journal entries, speeches, essays, and short and long fiction. The essays engage with each other to display the continuum in Chesnutt's thinking as he began his writing career and established his sense of social activism, as evidenced in his early journal entries. Collectively, the essays follow Chesnutt's works as he proceeded through the Jim Crow era, honing his ability to manipulate his mostly white audience through the astute, though apparently self-effacing, narrator, Uncle Julius, of his popular conjure tales. Chesnutt's ability to subvert audience expectations is equally noticeable in the subtle irony of his short stories. Several of the collection's essays address Chesnutt's novels, including Paul Marchand, F.M.C., Mandy Oxendine, The House Behind the Cedars, and Evelyn's Husband. The volume opens up new paths of inquiry into a major African American writer's oeuvre.
Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race
Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race write by Dean McWilliams. This book was released on 2010-07-01. Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932) was the first African American writer of fiction to win the attention and approval of America's literary establishment. Looking anew at Chesnutt's public and private writings, his fiction and nonfiction, and his well-known and recently rediscovered works, Dean McWilliams explores Chesnutt's distinctive contribution to American culture: how his stories and novels challenge our dominant cultural narratives--particularly their underlying assumptions about race. The published canon of Chesnutt's work has doubled in the last decade: three novels completed but unpublished in Chesnutt's life have appeared, as have scholarly editions of Chesnutt's journals, his letters, and his essays. This book is the first to offer chapter-length analyses of each of Chesnutt's six novels. It also devotes three chapters to his short fiction. Previous critics have read Chesnutt's nonfiction as biographical background for his fiction. McWilliams is the first to analyze these nonfiction texts as complex verbal artifacts embodying many of the same tensions and ambiguities found in Chesnutt's stories and novels. The book includes separate chapters on Chesnutt's journal and on his important essay "The Future American." Moreover, Charles W. Chesnutt and the Fictions of Race approaches Chesnutt's writings from the perspective of recent literary theory. To a greater extent than any previous study of Chesnutt, it explores the way his texts interrogate and deconstruct the language and the intellectual constructs we use to organize reality. The full effect of this new study is to show us how much more of a twentieth-century writer Chesnutt is than has been previously acknowledged. This accomplishment can only hasten his reemergence as one of our most important observers of race in American culture.
