Academic literature on the topic 'Black literary stereotype'

As argued by the literary critic Margaret Russett, Percival Everett “unhinges ‘black’ subject matter from a lingering stereotype of ‘black’ style [and] challenges the assumption that a single or consensual African-American experience exists to be represented.” The author presents such a radical individualism in his most admired literary work published in 2001. In Erasure, Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, the main character and narrator of the book, pens a stereotypically oriented African American novel that becomes an expression of “him being sick of it;” “an awful little book, demeaning and soul-destroying drivel” that caters for the tastes and expectations of the American readership but, at the same time, oscillates around pre-conceived beliefs, prejudices, and racial clichés supposedly emphasizing the ‘authentic’ black experience in the United States. Not only is Erasure about race, misconceptions of blackness and racial identification but also about academia, external constraints, and one’s fight against them. The present article, therefore, endeavors to analyze different forms of resistance and protest in Percival Everett’s well-acclaimed novel, demonstrating the intricate connections between the publishing industry, the impact of media, the literary canon formation and the treatment of black culture.

In this essay I construct a literary genealogy that situates William Dean Howells in the middle of a call-and-response literary conversation with popular women writers about race, gender, and genre. Since Howells correlated racial questions with realism, his only novel that treats intermarriage, An Imperative Duty (1891), offered Howells an opportunity to deploy his presumably objective, scientific, realist knowledge about race in order to challenge women's romantic miscegenation plots found in Margret Holmes Bates's The Chamber over the Gate (1886) and Alice Morris Buckner's Towards the Gulf (1887), two novels that he had recently read and reviewed. Yet the tragic mulatta stereotype, a stock figure of romanticism and sentimentality that was resistant to scientific discourse, ruptures Howells's goal of representing the figure according to the tenets of realism. In Iola Leroy (1892), Frances Ellen Watkins Harper cunningly recasts the tragic mulatta stereotype both to critique Howells's project and to represent the potential of black womanhood. Knowledge of Bates and Buckner can change critical conversation about the influence of women writers on Howells, the understanding of the role of the racialized woman in his fiction, and his conception of the link between the romantic mulatta and realist representation. Likewise, Harper takes issue with Howells's supposed ironic sophistication about race, and in Iola Leroy she rewrites many of his views in order to show the ways that miscegenation is at once a novelistic and a national problem.

The type of la donna Italiana, the statuesque woman with dark hair, light skin and large, black, hypnotic eyes was popularized among the European men of letters in the nineteenth century. This stereotype had already been solidified in eighteenth-century Italian phraseology, but it was later brought into general use by Madame de Staël and George Byron. The Italian poet of the late nineteenth century, Annetta Ceccoli Boneschi, gathered and described the most distinctive features of the female citizens of different regions of Italy used by foreign writers to create their heroines. Among others, the Venetians were supposed to be the most beautiful and seductive women, with their soft accent and smouldering gaze. In Poland, this type of heroine appeared in Józef Ignacy Kraszewski’s novel The Half-Demon of Venice, which is the main focus of this article. The creation of an Italian donna in this romance uses the stereotypes formed during the nineteenth century, but it also uses the individual observations made by Kraszewski himself during his tour through Italy.

Aim. The aim of the research is the comparative study of literary cat characters in Children’s Literature texts in Greek and Spanish and their instructive function in the transmission of social stereotypes. Methods. The research subscribes to the field of Literary Animal Studies based on the theory of Children’s Literature (Lukens, 1999) and through the intercultural perspective of Comparative Children’s Literature (O’Sullivan, 2005). Published children’s books from Greece, Spain and Spanish-speaking America were compared using textual analysis methods of Imagology (Beller & Leersen, 2007). Stereotyped variants were identified and organized in categories related to name, physical appearance, gender, behavior, and function of literary cat characters. Results. After examining a corpus of 37 books, 23 in Greek and 17 in Spanish (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Spain), textual analysis findings were compared, organized, and classified by language, country and readers’ age groups to locate that literary cat characters are usually pets or feral, and they remain consistently stereotyped as anthropomorphic and subversive. Cats with seven lives and magical powers are common perceptions, dominating in both cultural contexts, stereotypes extended to strong superstitions about black cats. Conclusions. In Children's Literature texts, cats are linguistically, literally, and socially defined literary constructs, can have usually human-like features, intercultural influences, and are potentially shaped by intertextual relations. They serve also as a narrative motif for the transmission of social values about non-human animals and the textual familiarization of nonadult readers with society’s cultural stereotypes.

Abstract Be it Pride of Baghdad (2006), Ex Machina (2004), Runaways (2003), The Private Eye (2013) or Saga (2012), the comic book author Brian K. Vaughan is renowned not only for the scope of the projects in his oeuvre but the nuance with which he portrays his characters, many of which are of types that usually receive less mainstream attention than their white, heteronormative, superhero counterparts. This paper will perform a close reading of Agent 355 as she appears in Vol. 1-10 of Y: The Last Man. As an analytical framework through which to parse the character, it will make recourse to the literary, cultural, and theoretical concepts associated with the magical negro. In doing so, this paper will analyse and explore the ways in which Vaughan’s writing simultaneously countermands and reinforces these stereotypical stock character arrangements in a precarious balancing act. Strong, intelligent, and determined in her expression and use of agency, 355 often fulfils the function of the magical negro, sanctified, and infused with black girl magic. On the other hand, Agent 355’s entire characterisation is also simultaneously circumscribed within the strong black woman stereotype replete with noble suffering and enduring perseverance.

Este artículo se propone estudiar la representación de la imagen del negro soldado en La revolución es un sueño eterno de Andrés Rivera. En efecto, frente a la negación por la historia del aporte épico de los afrodescendientes en las luchas por la emancipación, Andrés Rivera rescata la figura del afrosoldado argentino que se ha destacado heroicamente en los frentes bélicos para la defensa de la patria. Así, este trabajo analiza esta visión revolucionaria de la negritud argentina en Andrés Rivera. Tras estudio, las dos primeras partes han demostrado que los soldados afroargentinos han tenido una participación heroica tanto en las Invasiones Inglesas como en las campañas de Liberación de San Martín, por lo que Andrés Rivera propone una representación sin estereotipias de la imagen del negro, a través de los campos de batalla, con igual valentía y dignidad que bancos e indios, frente a una literatura acostumbrada a representar al negro en la subalternidad. Las dos últimas partes han revelado la imagen dignificante de la negritud argentina, a través del personaje de Segundo Reyes, un esclavo devenido capitán de ejército, y su relación de amistad y de armas con Juan José Castelli, el orador de la Revolución y Representante de la Primera Junta en el ejército del Alto Perú. Así, el trabajo ha mostrado, de manera general, que la imagen del negro ha sido honrada por Rivera mediante las armas, la sociabilidad y la relación de hermandad con el “amo” blanco. The negation of the Afro-descendant contribution has been one of the constants in the history of Argentina. The symbolic participation of slaves in the struggles of the country has been often ignored by white and Europeanist history which represents the black as a secondary subject, a representation in the subalternity which also characterized the literature. But with the rise of the historical novel at the end of the 20th century, a new vision of the role and the image of the Afro-descendant was born, where the latter acquired a fundamental place in the country. This is what Andres Rivera proposes in his novel entitled La revolución es un sueño eterno, that we have in this work through parts: a reminder of the participation of black slaves in the struggles for emancipation, the approach from the trenches, the character of the black captain Segundo Reyes and the relationship between negritude and aristocracy. The first part traces the heroic participation of blacks (slaves and free) in various battles of the country: English invasions, the, my revolution, the liberation war under San Martin, and the border struggles. The second part highlights the representation of “afroslodier”. With this approach, Andres Rivera speaks of the blacks not as a Community formed of slaves and free who, with regard to the whites and the Indians, stood heroically in all the struggles for the liberation of Argentina. To consolidate this approach without stereotype, the author uses an afro-argentine soldier character, a fisherman’s slave who becomes a captain of the army. The third part of the work analyses this revolutionary approach missing in literary history. And to highlight the loyalty and bravery of black soldiers alongside white figures, the author used, like Artigas and Ansina, duo Segundo Reyes, black captain, and Juan José Castelli, representative of the Government in the army of Alto Peru. The infallible friendship between the two during and after the wars which we analyzed in the last part shows how negritude and aristocracy (Blacks and Whites) are united by a perfect symbiosis made of fraternity and equal dignity.

Virginia Foster Durr was born in 1903 in Birmingham, Alabama in a former planter class family, and in spite of the gradual decline in the family fortune, she was brought up as a traditional southern belle, utterly subjected to the demands of the ideology of white male supremacy that ruled the Jim Crow South. Thus, she soon learnt that in the South a black woman could not be a lady, and that as a young southern woman she was desperately in need of a husband. It was not until she had fulfilled this duty that she began to open her eyes to the reality of poverty, injustice, discrimination, sexism and racism ensuing from the set of rules she had so easily embraced until then. In Outside the Magic Circle, Durr describes the process that made her aware of the gender discrimination implicit in the patriarchal southern ideology, and how this realization eventually led her to abhor racial segregation and the ideology of white male supremacy. As a consequence, in her memoirs she presents herself as a rebel facing the social ostracism resulting from her determination to fight against gender and racial discrimination in the Jim Crow South. This article delves into Durr’s composed textual self as a rebel, and suggests the existence of a crack in it, rooted in her inability to discern the real effects of white male supremacy on the domestic realm and in her subsequent blindness to the reality behind the mammy stereotype.

This descriptive qualitative research is done based on slave and slavery problem in Indonesia in literary work. It is executed by using deconstruction technique, and it has the goals to describe: (1) The relation between colonials and colonialized people in Surapati novel and (2) The resistance of slave to the employer, and (3) The characteristics of Surapati novel in postcolonial perspective. The result of this research shows that the relation between colonials and colonialized people, it is between Dutch and Indonesian indigene is an unbalanced relation. Dutch’s domination toward indigene is shown through Dutch’s prejudices toward indigene, animal stereotyping to indigent, and skin color discrimination which is constructed by colonial. Dutch viewed themselves are more civilized than indigene because they have white skin color, otherwise indigene have black skin color, or not white. This point of view is reconstructed in their mind and attitude, so there is a stereotype that indigene is uncivilized, negligent, lazy, and like an animal (monkey). The impact of this domination (discrimination, racism, and marginalization) makes indigene perform resistance. Resistance is done by slave/indigene in form of mimicry, and mockery that mocking Dutch colonial as an effort to destroy their power. The mimicry and mockery show the hybrid attitude of slave/indigene, so the discourse that is constructed in Surapati novel is ambiguous. So that, in postcolonial perspective this novel can be said having ambiguous characteristics. In one side it constructs opponent discourse, but in another side it is hegemonies by colonial discourse.

When a white writer portrays a black character, racial stereotypes and literary patterns almost always reveal their power. The portraits of blacks take forms that are by now archetypal: the mammy, Stepin Fetchit, the buck, the unspoiled primitive, the member of the oppressed black proletariat…. Such forms come all too easily to white writers; but “modern realism,” as Erich Auerbach called it, comes hard. Thus, white writers can seldom present a “tragically conceived life” of a black character and set that life solidly in a black culture. In portraying blacks, white writers tend toward the sentimental, the satiric, and the didactic rather than “objective seriousness, which seeks to penetrate to the depths of the passions and entanglements of a human life, but without itself becoming moved, or at least without betraying that it is moved” (Auerbach, 457 and 490). Although William Faulkner often tumbles – and sometimes leaps – into those pitfalls, occasionally he avoids them altogether. When he does so, however, readers find his work particularly hard to understand. His story “That Evening Sun” is a case in point.

The study takes an in-depth look at eight novels by white South African authors in which the main characters are black. The novels that were studied fell into two main categories, those that highlight (although not always to the same extent) the differences between white and black people and those in which the author takes care to depict the black main character as ‘a person just like any other’, or in which the emphasis is on the similarities between people regardless of race. The novels in the first category can be divided into purely fictional works on the one hand (Toiings (1934), Cry, the Beloved Country (1948) and Swart Pelgrim (1952)) and novels based on historical facts (Die Swerfjare van Poppie Nongena (1978) and Bidsprinkaan (2005)) on the other. In the fictional novels in this category, which are also the oldest/earliest of the selected novels, the narrator patronises the black main character, who is seen as naïve and in some cases at the mercy of baser urges. The researcher shows, however, that the intent of the authors was to gain the reader’s empathy for and understanding of the plight of the black character and, by implication, of black people in general. This applies regardless of whether the novel had an explicit political theme (e.g. Cry, the Beloved Country) or not (e.g. Toiings). The novels in the second category, i.e. those in which black characters are portrayed as not substantively different from white characters (Kennis van die Aand (1973), Proteus (2002) and Lerato (unpublished, 2011) also include novels in which the main theme is a political one (Kennis van die Aand) and those in which political issues are not central to the plot (Proteus) or in which there is hardly any reference to political issues at all (Lerato). The outcomes of the study show that the intention of the authors of the studied novels in the pre-apartheid era was to promote understanding and reconciliation and not to strengthen divisive stereotypes. While this cannot be measured in empirical terms, anecdotal evidence suggests that literature does contribute to social change, albeit in an indirect manner. Despite the harsh criticism (particularly from black authors and scholars) of the practice by white authors to make use of black main characters, it can be argued that, within the South African context, such novels have played a role in achieving mutual understanding and reconciliation. There is a notable shift in the post-apartheid novels. Rather than pleading the case of the black main character with the white audience, Meyer (2002) and Homann (2011) portray their black main characters as equal players in a diverse society. If literature is seen as a reflection of society, this is an encouraging sign that South Africa has substantively moved on from apartheid.
Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2011.
Afrikaans
unrestricted

In post-war France, literary representations of sub-Saharan Africa were written and read in response to political, aesthetic, and commercial imperatives. A greater number of these representations appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s from a flourishing African literary scene which built consciously on the achievements of black writers in France during the inter-war years and as French publishers responded to growing – if still very limited – interest among metropolitan readers. The literary field of this period was gradually reconfigured by decolonization and its destabilizing effect on ideas of literary value and authority and their, often unconscious, attachment to the French national imaginary. This is seen in the degree of meaning attached to African authorship by readers, attitudes towards the French language, and editorial mediations of literary style. Whether explicitly engaged with the complex political realities of decolonization, affirming black cultural identities, or reproducing colonial stereotypes of exotic difference, decisions were made regarding the form, content, and material production of a very wide range of texts. What emerges is a complex portrait of the French-language publishing scene during the so-called ...

This chapter explores the plays of George C. Wolfe, whose work reclaims and reopens the literary and cultural past, and Suzan-Lori Parks, whose work furthers this project. Both playwrights take as the subjects of their satire the well-worn narratives and even revered texts of the African American canon, and present common stereotypes in order to highlight the racialized past. In so doing, these plays highlight the contradictions of black identity, and ask their audiences to embrace these contradictions

This chapter analyzes the visual production and antislavery activism of Robert Douglass Jr. in Philadelphia. He produced images for public and private consumption that aligned with the popular imagery of the growing antislavery movement. These images also challenged the racial stereotypes popular during the period. Within the context of a culture that valued images as potentially instructive and transformative, Douglass’s images and civic activities reveal his connections to many of the influential leaders and organizations of Philadelphia. The Douglass family held together the ties that bound activist Philadelphia together as Robert came of age. Sketching out the worlds that Douglass moved through including antislavery societies and literary societies, this chapter follows his support for numerous campaigns for black rights. An extended stay in Haiti both inspired his artistic production and strengthened his resolve for the possibilities for black people in the United States.