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原创英语论文范文-The African-American Literary Tradit

2013-07-25 01:16

The African-American Literary Tradition

African-American Literature is the important and unique part of the American literature. It is a unique literature because it is all tied up with the unique experience of African-American people and the phrase of their steady growth (Chang Yaoxing 2005: 520). The uniqueness of the African-American is formed by various factors. One of the essential causes is the history of slavery and the marginal status in the white-dominated Culture. Double-Consciousness, a birthmark ironed in many African-American writers, forces the writers to find an effective way to voice their own mind and gain the cultural recognition, and Blackness is the characteristic of their literature to strive for survival in the society. The Black Aesthetics—Signifying becomes the unique way to express the conflicts the Black faced in the world and it develops quickly and is employed efficiently. Also, the recurrent theme of the seeking the Root or seeking the Identity finds vivid expression in the African-American Literature. It is the exact reflection of the process of African-American literary development.

1.1  Double-Consciousness and Blackness
Double Consciousness, the recurring and pervasive motif employed frequently by the African-American writers, was coined by the famous scholar W.E.B Du Bois. His great gift to the African-American Literary Tradition is the concept of the Duality of the African-American, which is expressed metaphorically in his related metaphors of “Double Consciousness” and the“Veil.” He said in his book the Soul of Black Folk,

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mnogolian, the negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world—a world which yield him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this Double –Consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, ----an American, a Negro; two thoughts, two un-reconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double-self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanized America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.” (1989: 3)

The ancestors of the African-American were the slavers from the Africa. They were forced to strive for survival in the alien world. Under such circumstance, coupled with the double pressure from the white culture and their own tradition culture, they must face the problems of preserving the Negro blood and gaining the acquisition of Self-Identity (程&王 2001: 193). The uniqueness of the survival determines to some extent their attitudes and the means of expression toward the world and the main stream.
The African-American’s Double Consciousness deeply rooted in the 19th and 20th century African-American novels. African-American Literature underwent the process from the mere description to protest, from the avocation of the raceness of African-American to the concentration of the universal theme. Most of the poems and novels written by Langston Hughes coincide with the concept of “Double-Consciousness”. In his poem “the Negro Speaks of Rivers” and the volume of poetry “the Weary Blues”, he realizes that the significance of the meaning of African-American Literary Tradition to he himself and his people as well. He becomes aware of the fact that he is a Negro who suffers racial discrimination with his fellow people and what the Black wants to do is to break this deadlock. Richard Wright’s Native Son vehemently criticizes the loss of humanity arisen from the destitution of the towns and the world. Bigger Thomas embodies a new type of African American personality. Rebellious by nature, Thomas is never able to feel at peace with the world in which he lives, thus he turns to violence. Toni Morrison’s Beloved efficiently exposes the evil in the commonplace by employing colorful and strange images. Beloved penetrates, perhaps more deeply than any historical or psychological studies could, the unconscious emotional and psychic consequences of slavery. The novel reveals how the condition of enslavement in the external world, particular the denial of one’s status as a human subject, has deep repercussion in the individuals’ internal world. Alice Walker’s the Color Purple highlights the sociological elements of the art-creation from the analysis of the African-American’s families. First and foremost, it is the book about African-American women’s growth against the backdrop of social and patriarchal oppression.