The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism
- ISBN-10
- 0199874514
- ISBN-13
- 9780199874514
- Series
- The Signifying Monkey
- Category
- Social Science
- Pages
- 352
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-06-24
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Authors
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Description
Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative" and in The Washington Post Book World as "brilliantly original," Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey is a groundbreaking work that illuminates the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature. It elaborates a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, Gates uncovers a unique system for interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition that black slaves brought with them to the New World. Exploring the process of signification in black American life and literature by analyzing the transmission and revision of various signifying figures, Gates provides an extended analysis of what he calls the "Talking Book," a central trope in early slave narratives that virtually defines the tradition of black American letters. Gates uses this critical framework to examine several major works of African-American literature--including Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo--revealing how these works signify on the black tradition and on each other. This superb 25th-Anniversary Edition features a new preface by Gates that reflects on the impact of the book and its relevance for today's society as well as a new afterword written by noted critic W. T. J. Mitchell.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2013-11
- 336 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
-
- 1989-12-14
- 320 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
-
- 1989-12-14
- 322 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press
-
- 1988-08-11
- 320 pages
- Paperback
- Oxford University Press, USA
Similar books
-
The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism
By Henry Louis GatesExplores the relationship between African and Afro-American vernacular traditions and Black literature
-
Five Little Monkeys Jumping On The Bed
By Kim Mitzo Thompson, Karen Mitzo HilderbrandRead the story. Then sing the story! It isn’t a secret that using songs to teach children pre-reading skills is fun and successful. This classic song is featured as a read-along and a sing-along.
-
Colored People
By Henry Louis Gates, Jr.A winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Award and the Lillian Smith Prize, Colored People is a pungent and poignant masterpiece of recollection, a work that extends and deepens our sense of African American history even as it ...
-
Transforming Monkey: Adaptation and Representation of a Chinese Epic
By Hongmei SunIn Sinographies: Writing China, edited by Eric Hayot, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao, 333–54. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Rolston, David L. How to Read the Chinese Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ...
-
Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present
By Angelyn MitchellDrawing on a quote from Frederick Douglass for the title of this book, Angelyn Mitchell explains in her introduction the importance for those "within the circle" of African American literature to examine their own works and to engage this ...
-
African American Literary Theory: A Reader
By Winston NapierFifty-one essays by writers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as critics and academics such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examine the central texts and arguments in African American literary ...
-
Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition
By Jonathan De SouzaBeller-McKenna, Daniel. 2005. “Distance and Disembodiment: Harps, Horns, and the Requiem Idea in Schumann and Brahms.” Journal of Musicology 22:47–89. Benade, Arthur H. 1973. “The Physics of Brasses.” Scientific American 229 (1): 24–35.
-
Loose Canons: Notes on the Culture Wars
By Henry Louis GatesExamines multiculturism in American literature and the cultural diversity found in the American classroom.
-
Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory
By Jr., Houston A. BakerRelating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level.
-
Essentials of the Theory of Fiction
By Michael J. Hoffman, Patrick D. MurphyThis third edition of the bestselling Essentials of the Theory of Fiction provides a comprehensive view of the theory of fiction from the nineteenth century through modernism and postmodernism to the present.