Uncle Jack: An African American Trickster Who Becomes a Christ
0
조회
0
다운로드
1
인용
0
참고문헌
초록
Abstract
In The Negro Novel in America (1958), Robert Bone once assessed Uncle Jack in Sutton E. Griggs's fifth novel, Pointing the Way (1908), as a minor character. Later Wilson J. Moses, a noticeable Griggs scholar, was unpleased with Bone's assessment, predicating that "Bone has done a lazy job on Griggs." Uncle Jack could seem insignificant especially to the readers, like Bone, who are not familiar with African American trickster figures in their literature. For African American trickster figures are different from those in early Euro-Caucasian British and American literature: while the latter are predominantly related to social, economical, and political class struggles, the former are to racial conflicts in a slavery society. Especially during slavery, black slaves often virtually become tricksters to circumvent slave-masters' dehumanizing maltreatment and psychological oppression and to subsist chronic material shortages. Therefore, in slave narratives and slave fictions reflecting those people's lives and those social circumstances, trickster figures frequently become major characters. Griggs's character Uncle Jack is not exceptional of such cases on the one hand: playing a pivotal role in the novel, Uncle Jack is a trickster illuminating African American humor, wit, and wisdom in a racist social system. On the other hand, however, the Uncle Jack character is not restrained in the conventional periphery of a literary trickster figure but moves beyond that: Uncle Jack ultimately becomes a Christ who sacrifices himself for social and cultural benefits of his race. Such a character development is a product of ideological and cultural interaction of two cultures African American folklore tradition and Christianity, a Euro-Caucasian religion and culture and ultimately expands the peripheries of African American literary practice.
참고문헌 (25)
- "The Negro Novel in America" (1958), Yale UP
- "Negro Poetry and Drama and The Negro in American Fiction", pp.100~14
- "Clotel, or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States" (2000), Bedford[DOI]
- "The Marrow of Tradition", pp.465~747
- "The 'John and Old Master' Stories and the World of Slavery A Study in Folktales and History", pp.418~35 29 (1974)
- "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" (1997), New York: Signet Classic
- "The Souls of Black Folk" (1997), 1903. Boston: Bedford Books
- "Culture Implications of Early African- American Fiction" (1978)
- "The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vass, the African.", pp.35~242 (2000), New York: The Library of America
- "Negro Voices in American Fiction U of North Carolina P", pp.56~66 (1948)
- "Imperium in Imperio" (1969), Arno Press and New York Times
- "Co-operative Natures and Social Education; A Philosophy of Civic Life" (1929), National Public Welfare League
- "Guide to Racial Greatness; or The Science of Collective Efficiency" (1923)
- "Imperium in Imperio" (1899), Cincinnati Editor Publishing Company
- "According to Law" (1916)
- "Constructive Criticism of the Negro Race" (1922)
- "The Reconstruction of a Race" (1917)
- "The Novels of Reverend Sutton E", pp.203~40 216 (1979)
- "Sutton E. Griggs's Imperium in Imperio: Breaking with the Myth of 'White Supremacy and Negro Subordination' and Uplifting the Race", 47(1), pp.245~259 (2003)
- "Griggs's Social Theory: Collective Efficiency and Cooperation" (2004), Arizona State U
- "Sojourner Truth, a Life, a Symbol" (1996), W. W. Norton & Company
- ".From Trickster to Badman:The Black Folk Hero in Slavery and Freedom" (1989), U of Pennsylvania P
- "Writing Tricksters: Mythic Gambols in American Ethnic Literature." (1997), Berkeley: U of California P
- "Uncle Tome's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly" (1998), Signet Classic,
- "Narrative of Sojourner Truth.1850.", pp.567~676 (2000)