RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Revisions of the Oral: Orality and Sexuality in John A. Williams's The Man Who Cried IAm
A1 Horton-Stallings, LaMonda
AB As contemporary American fiction evolves, new visions of the oraland folk must be employed to ensure the growth and future of a literaturesure to become more multi-cultural. African-American literary criticsoften seek theoretical approaches to African-American literaturethrough folk and oral traditions. These traditions demonstrate a concernwith power, marginality, and language. Oral and folk traditionsalso suggest ways for artists to solidify their “marginal” cultural/ethnicaesthetics, heritage, and social concerns in American literature. My paperexamines how the African-American literary tradition and its modes oforality continue to contribute to the making of contemporary fiction. Isee the oral tradition as a valuable tool in exploring the black body andsexuality in the African-American literary tradition. I examine how theoral tradition in African-American literature works to deconstruct genderand sexual social orders through eroticized structures of voice inthe text. In implementing the practice of such theory, the second purposeof the paper seeks to examine certain tropes of orality and sexualityin John A. Willliams’s The Man Who Cried I Am. By examining themythic sexualness of the black male, the voice of grotesqueness andviolence, and the empowering effects of oral rituals, I explore how thetext uses the power of the erotic ( in orality) to aid African Americans inthe process of learning to own their bodies and voices without “Othering”themselves in the process. Revisions of the oral tradition ensure newwriting and critical techniques for the future of contemporary Americanfiction.
PB Servicio de Publicaciones. Universidad de La Laguna
SN e-2530-8335
YR 1999
FD 1999
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30334
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30334
LA en
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 27-nov-2024