原创英语论文范文-The African-American Literary Tradit(2)
2013-07-25 01:16
导读：From these influential works, we can see that most of African-American novels are dealing with the discrepancy of their perception about the true world from the mainstream society, which is what we ca
From these influential works, we can see that most of African-American novels are dealing with the discrepancy of their perception about the true world from the mainstream society, which is what we called “Blackness”.
Blackness, the unique characteristic of the African-American Literature, lies in the fact that we can hear two voices in the text—the text and the language “Double-Voiced”. The Blacks employ the metaphorical words to deconstruct the value set by the white (赵永健 2004) .The Blackness in the novels closely relates with the unique history and the Identity of African-American. Blacks bear the Double-Consciousness in this alien world, dangling between their own culture and western culture. In order to voice their mind, they must create the African characteristic works to project their Blackness to the western culture. Thus, the African-American literary Tradition greatly influences the African-American writers in various aspects, all these we can find vivid description in the Ellison’s Invisible Man. The invisible man continuously strives for the Self-Identity in the white world, undergoing a lot of failure and gains the perception of the dilemma of the Negro in the world, thus he experiences from the innocence and mature.
The history of African-American is the history of striving for self-recognition, self-identity and social quality. The race consciousness was ignited by the declaration of the Emancipation of Proclamation and the first struggle of the African-American in the 1920s begun with the Harlem renaissance. The Civil Right movement in the 1960s developed quickly at a large scale, and the upsurge of seeking for root appeared in Contemporary African-American Literature. The history Black writers seek for is the history begun with the Slavery of their ancestors, which the white-dominates American literature either didn’t pay much attention to or whitewashed this part of history (曾竹青 2002). The typical example can be found in the Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. The story was set up in the civil war, but the suffering and disaster of the blacks were concealed by the pastoral and romantic plantation life. Influenced by the superiority of the white culture, like the Traditional American Literature, Blacks in the novel were unexceptionally portrayed as the useless, idle servant. The Uncle Tom in the Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s cabin was the most submissive character in the white society. Shouldering Double-Consciousness, The African-Americans try harder to strike a balance between the Traditional Culture and Western Culture and to seek their own root and their spirit heaven. The theme of seeking the root in the Afro-American literature, thus, occurs frequently in most black writers. For example, in the Root written by the Alex Haley, we can find how hard Kunta tried to preserve his language and his own culture. The milkman in Toni Morrison’s The Song of Solomon grew up to be a true man when he followed the footprint of his ancestors. Sethe in the Beloved successfully regained herself spiritually only by discarding the regret and shame in the heart after experiencing many incidents. Therefore, why the Black writers want to trace the history or their root is to find a force that enables them to stand up in modern American society, which comes from their understanding and acceptance of their own history and tradition. The seeking for root is the seeking for the identity to some degree. The important theme in Ellison’s Invisible Man is to find his or her Identity to survive and develop in the world. Ellison presents and explores the theme by using kinds of methods, which is the highlight of the whole story.
1.2 Black Aesthetics—Signifying （科教作文网http://zw.ΝsΕAc.com发布）
Henry Louis Gates, the famous American scholar, said that the outstanding characteristic of Afro-American literature is the figurality. In his “Criticism in the Jungle” in Black Literature and Literature Theory, he elaborates and testifies this theory in lots of his works, such as the Signifying Monkey—a Theory of Afro-American Literature Criticism (王莉娅 1997). Thus, the theory becomes the most common and obvious characteristic of the Afro-American Literary Tradition. The Blacks couldn’t survival in this white-dominated society without figurality. They are the master of the figurality, for what they say is one thing, what they mean is another. It is the exact means they employ to strive for survival in the depression in the white culture. The metaphors are the characteristics of the African tradition.
Another African-American critic, Houston A. Baker in his Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American literature; a Vernacular Theory, explores the similar theory of the signifying or figurality. The African-American Literary Tradition is based on the social reality and is embodied by Blacks’ dialect, music (Blues, Jazz), ritual, and religious (刘捷 1997). The reason for this is that Afro-American novels are the synthesis products, influenced by the combination of society and culture. The novels are deeply rooted in the oral culture and the myth, which are the source of the Symbolism in the African-American Literature.
