Research Catalog

Title

The nadir & the zenith : temperance & excess in the early African American novel / Anna Pochmara.

Author

Pochmara, Anna

Publication

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2021]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 246 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

"The Nadir and the Zenith is a study of temperance and melodramatic excess in African American fiction before the Harlem Renaissance. Anna Pochmara combines formal analysis with attention to the historical context, which, apart from US postbellum race relations, includes also white and black temperance movements and their discourses. Despite the proliferation of black literature in this period, and its popularity at the time, African American fiction between Reconstruction and World War I has not attracted nearly as much scholarly attention as the Harlem Renaissance. Pochmara provocatively aims to suggest that the historical moment when black people's "status in American society" reached its lowest point-the so-called "Nadir"-coincides with the zenith of black novelistic productivity before World War II. Pochmara's examination explores authors such as Charles W. Chesnutt, Julia C. Collins, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sutton Griggs, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins, Lillian B. Jones Horace, James Weldon Johnson, Amelia E. Johnson, Edward A. Johnson, J. McHenry Jones, and Katherine D. Tillman. Altogether, they published no fewer than 33 novels between 1865 and 1918, surpassing the creativity of New Negro prose writers and the number of novels they published during the 1920s"--

Alternative Title

Nadir and the zenith

Subject

• 1800-1899
• American fiction > African American authors > History and criticism
• American fiction > 19th century > History and criticism
• Temperance in literature
• Characters and characteristics in literature
• African Americans > Intellectual life > 19th century
• African Americans > Intellectual life
• American fiction
• American fiction > African American authors

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: The zenith & the nadir : the early African American novel -- The excess of mulatta melodrama. Mulatta melodrama : mixed race and the melodramatic mode in the early Black novel -- The apple falls far from the tree : matrilineal opposition in mulatta melodrama -- The fall of man : White masculinity on trial -- Black tropes of temperance. The genre mergers of the nadir : anti-drink literature, sentimentalism, and naturalism in Black temperance narratives -- Aesthetic excess, ethical discipline, and racial indeterminacy : Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Sowing and reaping -- Tropes of temperance, specters of naturalism : Amelia E. Johnson's Clarence and Corinne -- Enslavement to philanthropy, freedom from heredity : Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Uncalled -- Metropolitan possibilities and compulsions : the mulatta and the dandy in Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the gods -- Conclusion: The nadir and beyond : echoes of mulatta melodrama and the Black temperance novel in the early twentieth century.

Call Number

Sc E 22-632

ISBN

• 9780820358918
• 0820358916
• 9780820359021
• 0820359025

LCCN

2020041574

OCLC

1200833772

Author

Pochmara, Anna, author.

Title

The nadir & the zenith : temperance & excess in the early African American novel / Anna Pochmara.

Publisher

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2021]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1800-1899

Research Call Number

Sc E 22-632