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Black Narrative

The slave narratives are major building blocks of the African American literary tradition.  This course traces their influence on prose writing through the end of the 20th century.  Themes, metaphors, and narrative strategies employed by Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs shape the work of autobiographers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Maya Angelou.  The interplay between autobiography and fiction is notable as well.  James Weldon Johnson revises the traditions of the slave narrative in general, and of Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk in particular, in his novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.   Late twentieth century writers, such as Charles Johnson and Toni Morrison, "reimagine"slavery by drawing on the models of the 19th century texts and on African American oral traditions, as well as on an array of modern fiction techniques.

Requirements include regular attendance, two papers (8-10 pages), and a final exam.