(UM)
  • Druga svetovna vojna in črnci v ameriški književnosti : doktorska disertacija = World War II and the blacks in American literature : doctoral thesis
    Butković, Matea
    This dissertation examines the interplay between the historical context of the World War II period and the literary works produced by Richard Wright, Ann Petry, and Chester Himes, the three leading ... members of the "Richard Wright School of Protest" of the wartime years. My primary concern is with the literary rendition of both the communal and individual Black experiences in the wartime fiction, and with the meaning of the term "radical" that has been used to describe Black aspirations for equality during this period. Special attention is also paid to the manner in which these three authors approach institutional racism during the wartime presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In the United States the genre of social protest resurfaced in the so-called "Richard Wright School of Protest" during the period of two major migratory movements when the "race issue" became pronounced possibly more than ever before. Wright, Petry, and Himes, whose works have to this day remained classified as protest fiction, are today considered as the first professional group of Black literary activists. Unlike the Harlem Renaissance, whose aim was to produce uplifting pieces of art, music, and literature, Black writers of the 1940s period no longer felt the need to prove to the predominately White readership the Blacks' creative abilities. Now, guided by the revolutionary spirit of nationalist streams, detached from Booker T. Washington's accommodationist approach and fortified by the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, World War II literature became used primarily for political reasons, i.e. for the advancement of the socio-political position of Black Americans. In this undertaking, naturalism, environmental determinism, and traces of existentialism, which form the backbone of the protest fiction of the early 1940s, became convenient means of addressing the reality of life within the Black community of the wartime period. The literary analysis includes Richard Wright's novels Native Son (1940) and Black Boy. (American Hunger). A Record of Childhood and Youth (1945), Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945), and Ann Petry's short story Like a Winding Sheet (1945), which were published during the wartime years, but also her post-war novel The Street (1946) as the sole example of a female protagonist's perspective on the racial dynamics in the United States. A historical overview of the development of racism under the impact of philosophical and pseudo-scientific 9 practices, the importance and role of the Black press amidst the new world conflict, the Blacks' contribution to the war conflict and industry, the meaning of left-wing ideologies for the Black communities, as well as findings from sociological and psychological research on the perception of the Black identity in the first half of the twentieth century help to articulate the impact of New Deal and Jim Crow policies on the portrayal of the Black community and provide a starting point for my exploration of the inner world of Wright's, Petry's, and Himes's protagonists. By examining the underlying historical context and the subject matter discussed in the literature of the World War II period, conclusion can be drawn that the revolutionary and militant character of the wartime genre of Black social protest is found in individual acts of psychological and physical resistance against the oppressive wartime environment. The protagonists, shaped by different geographical and political forces, yet all epitomizing Alain Locke's inquisitive, politically conscious, and highly sensitive "New Negro," rebel against the discriminatory American socio-political structure because they become aware of the unattainability of their American Dream and that there is no escape from institutional racism, not even in the more liberal North. While Wright's, Petry's, and Himes's literary endeavors certainly belong to the broad genre of social protest, the purpose of their diverse voices is not a mere description of Black suffering, but is rather a call to individual resistance against racial oppression during a time when the nation was fighting a war against discrimination abroad. Their fiction is a reflection of an emerging Black consciousness that would in the following decades challenge the Jim Crow apparatus. Therefore, I propose the term literature of resistance when discussing the "Richard Wright School of Protest" as a more accurate nomenclature for the political activism found in World War II protest literature.
    Type of material - dissertation ; adult, serious
    Publication and manufacture - Ljubljana : [M. Butković], 2017
    Language - english
    COBISS.SI-ID - 64201826

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