1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910782557703321

Autore

Ashe Bertram D. <1959-, >

Titolo

From within the frame : storytelling in African-American fiction / / Bertram D. Ashe

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Routledge, , 2002

ISBN

1-136-71113-9

0-203-95375-4

1-299-28583-X

1-136-71114-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (163 p.)

Collana

Literary criticism and cultural theory : outstanding dissertations

Disciplina

813.009/23/08996073

Soggetti

American fiction - African American authors - History and criticism

American fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

African Americans - Intellectual life - 20th century

Frame-stories - History and criticism

African Americans in literature

Storytelling in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-141) and index.

Nota di contenuto

"A little personal attention" : storytelling and the Black audience in Charles W. Chesnutt's The conjure woman -- "Ah don't mean to bother wid tellin' 'em nothin'" : Zora Neale Hurston's critique of the storytelling aesthetic in Their eyes were watching God -- Listening to the blues : Ralph Ellison's Trueblood episode in Invisible man -- The best "possible returns" : storytelling and gender relations in James Alan McPherson's "The story of a scar" -- From within the frame : narrative negotiations with the Black aesthetic in Toni Cade Bambara's "My man Bovanne" -- "Would she have believed any of it?" : interrogating the storytelling motive in John Edgar Wideman's "Doc's story."

Sommario/riassunto

The book explores the written representation of African-American oral storytelling from Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison to James Alan McPherson, Toni Cade Bambara and John Edgar Wideman.  At its core, the book compares the relationship of the ""frame tale""-an inside-the-text storyteller telling a tale to an inside-



the-text listener-with the relationship between the outside-the-text writer and reader.  The progression is from Chesnutt's 1899 frame texts, in which the black spoken voice is contained by a white narrator/listener, to Bambara's sixties-era example of a ""fra