Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "Racial" Self - Softcover

Gates Jr., Henry Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195060741 ISBN 13: 9780195060744

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1989

Synopsis

In this insightful volume, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a leading scholar in African-American studies, attacks the notion of African-American literature as a kind of social realism. Insisting, instead, that critics focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism--the language of the text--Gates advocates the use of a close, methodical analysis of language, made possible by modern literary theory. Incorporating the theoretical insights of critics such as Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Bloom, he explores the work of a wide range of African-American writers from Phillis Wheatley to Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker.

About this title

About the Author

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is Chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies and W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of The Signifying Monkey, Loose Canons, and Colored People; general editor of The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers; and general editor of The W.E.B. Du Bois Institute series.

From the Back Cover

This insightful book, written by a leading scholar in African-American studies, attacks the notion of African-American literature as a kind of social realism. Insisting, instead, that critics focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism- the language of the text--Henry Louis Gates, Jr. advocates the use of a close, methodical analysis of language, made possible by modern literary theory.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195060741
• ISBN 13: 9780195060744
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352