11/28/2023 0 Comments Prologue invisible man ralph ellison![]() ![]() Use a quote of Ellison’s or an idea he expresses that you feel is useful to consider in connection with the novel. I also want you to look at the Ellison National Book Award acceptance speech, “Brave Words for a Startling Occasion”, “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke”, “The Art of Fiction: An Interview”, and “The Novel as a Function of American Democracy.” Choose a particular point that Ellison makes in one of these pieces as the basis for a reply to this post. ![]() ![]() Add to this list as you see fit (what seem to be the intellectual stakes for Ellison in writing this novel?) these are a few ideas to at least begin with. How is the prologue possibly an opening theoretical inquiry into the meaning of the text? Other issues to consider as theoretical problems/possibilities for Ellison: the perspective of time as a narrative condition, the use of dreams storytelling as a meta-level of narrative (the role of stories within the broader narrative arc of novel–think about Trueblood) representing the clash and interplay of ideologies through literature (consider the representation of folk culture, black middle-class respectability, white liberalism, accommodation) the use of jokes, tricks, and “insanity” as lenses to comprehend the novel. The central metaphor (is it a metaphor?) of invisibility is a case in point. Furthermore, it might be as appropriate to call Ellison a “theorist’s writer” because of the way his writing lends itself to theoretical exposition–to a degree, often anticipating the theoretical insights a critic might bring to the novel, and embedding theoretical ideas within the architectonics of the novel itself. He understands, one might say, the distinctive power of literature to offer the text as a space to experience and grapple with ideas through the manipulation of words, images, and themes. Ellison is certainly what many refer to as a “writer’s writer”–meaning that his attention to literary craft and form reflects a deep investment in fashioning the narrative to create a profound and lingering connection with readers. It is a modernist, experimental, musical, political, psychological, and existential (among many other descriptive categories) text. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is one of the preeminent twentieth-century African American novels, and a literary classic that transcends many different categories. ![]()
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