Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson

Herman Beavers

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 1995

Wrestling Angels into Song

The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPherson

Herman Beavers

In the series Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction

https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512800852

Overview
Contents

About this book

Herman Beavers offers a richly nuanced study of Ernes J. Gaines, James Alan McPherson, and Ralph Ellison as writers who have found ways to invest circumstances that might otherwise be seen as sites of squalor or despair with a sense of cultural vitality. He examines the Ellisonian themes and motifs the two later writers take up in their fiction, and looks at Ellison's influence on the strategies they enact to construct themselves as American writers.

For Beavers, the fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson are peopled by characters who value acts of storytelling and whose stories frame a fuller, more complex, and more inclusive version of American identity than those the dominant white culture has allowed.

Author / Editor information

Herman Beavers is Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I. Innovations of Kin
Chapter 1. Relative Politics: The Literary Triumverate of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Ernest J. Gaines, and James Alan McPherson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	11
Chapter 2. The Possible in Things Unwritten: Kinship and Innovation in the Fictions of Ellison, Gaines, and McPherson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	39
Part II. Trueblood Echoing
Chapter 3. Tilling the Soil to Find Ourselves: Conversion, Labor, and [Re]membering in Gaines's Of Love and Dust and In My Father's House Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Chapter 4. "If It's Going To Be Any Good, It's Your Story"-. Legibility, [Un]speakability, and Historical Performance in McPherson's "A Solo Song: For Doc" Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	104
Part III: The Lower Frequencies
Chapter 5. Voices from the Underground: Conspiracy, Intimacy, and Voice in Gaines's Fictions Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
Chapter 6. "The Life of the Law Is Thus a Life of Art": Antagonism and Persuasion in McPherson's Legal Fiction Trilogy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	277

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 296
Keywords: Literature; Cultural Studies

eBook

Published: August 5, 2015
ISBN: 9781512800852