Modern Fiction: Portraits in Black and White

FAIN: FS-10766-78

Michael G. Cooke
Stanford University (Stanford, CA 94305-2004)

The thematic focus will be on the "outsider" figure, the formal focus on the "economy" of the novel, and these two foci will be reconciled in relation to the question of how modern fiction deploys character and action so as to establish a cultural and philosophical centrality for the personality who is socially denied. Texts will include: Conrad, The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'; DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk; Johnson, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, Wright, Native Son; Ellison, Invisible Man, and others.