Freedom Readers

Dennis Looney

Description

Freedom Readers: The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy is a literary-historical study of the many surprising ways in which Dante Alighieri and the Divine Comedy have assumed a position of importance in African American culture. Dennis Looney examines how African American authors have read, interpreted, and responded to Dante and his work from the late 1820s to the present.

In many ways, the African American reception of Dante follows a recognizable narrative of reception: the Romantic rehabilitation of the author; the late-nineteenth-century glorification of Dante as a radical writer of reform; the twentieth-century modernist rewriting; and the adaptation of the Divine Comedy into the prose of the contemporary novel. But surely it is unique to African American rewritings of Dante to suggest that the Divine Comedy is itself a kind of slave narrative. Only African American “translations” of Dante use the medieval author to comment on segregation, migration, and integration. While many authors over the centuries have learned to articulate a new kind of poetry from Dante’s example, for African American authors attuned to the complexities of Dante’s hybrid vernacular, his poetic language becomes a model for creative expression that juxtaposes and blends classical notes and the vernacular counterpoint in striking ways. Looney demonstrates this appropriation of Dante as a locus for black agency in the creative work of such authors as William Wells Brown, the poet H. Cordelia Ray, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, Gloria Naylor, Toni Morrison, and the filmmaker Spencer Williams.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• African American
• American
• Black

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 11 mars 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268085773
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

F R E E D O M R E A D E R S

t h e w i l l i a m a n d k at h e r i n e d e v e r s s e r i e s i n da n t e a n d m e d i e va l i ta l i a n l i t e r at u r e

Zygmunt G. Baranski, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs, editors ´

—————— VO L U M E 1 2 VO L U M E 3 Freedom Readers: The African American The Design in the Wax: The Structure of the ReceptionofDanteAlighieriandtheDivineDivine Comedyand Its Meaning Comedy Dennis Looney Marc Cogan • •

VO L U M E 1 1 Dante’sCommedia:Theology as Poetry edited by Vittorio Montemaggi • and Matthew Treherne

VO L U M E 1 0 Petrarch and Dante: Anti-Dantism, Metaphysics, ´ Traditionedited by Zygmunt G. Baranski • and Theodore J. Cachey, Jr.

VO L U M E 9 The Ancient Flame: Dante and the Poets Winthrop Wetherbee •

VO L U M E 8 Accounting for Dante: Urban Readers and Writers in Late Medieval Italy Justin Steinberg •

VO L U M E 7 Experiencing the Afterlife: Soul and Body in Dante and Medieval Culture Manuele Gragnolati •

VO L U M E 6 Understanding Dante John A. Scott •

VO L U M E 5 Dante and the Grammar of the Nursing Body Gary P. Cestaro •

VO L U M E 4 TheFioreand theDetto d’Amore: A Late 13th-Century Italian Translation of theRoman de la Rose,attributable to Dante Translated, with introduction and • notes, by Santa Casciani and Christopher Kleinhenz

VO L U M E 2 TheFiorein Context: Dante, France, Tuscany edited by Zygmunt G. Baranski ´ • and Patrick Boyde

VO L U M E 1 Dante Now: Current Trends in Dante Studies edited by Theodore J. Cachey, Jr. •

FREEDOM R E A D E R S

The African American Reception of Dante Alighieri and theDivine Comedy

D E N N I S L O O N E Y

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2011 by the University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Manuscript page of the prologue toInvisible Manby Ralph Ellison. Copyright © Ralph Ellison, used with permission of The Wylie Agency.

The author and publisher are grateful for permission to publish poetry from:

Black Animaby N.J. Loftis. Copyright © 1973 by N.J. Loftis. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

“Detroit Renaissance” by Dudley Randall, inA Litany of Friends,2d edition. By permission of Lotus Press, Inc.

“One sees pictures of Dante” by Carl Phillips, fromCortège. Copyright © 1995 by Carl Phillips. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

“Erudition” by Al Young. Copyright © 1992 and 2001 by Al Young. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Looney, Dennis. Freedom readers : the African American reception of Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy / Dennis Looney. p. cm. — (The William and Katherine Devers series in Dante and Medieval Italian literature ; v. 12) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03386-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-268-08577-3(web pdf) 1. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321—Appreciation—United States. 2. African Americans—Intellectual life. 3. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321. Divina commedia. 4. Dante Alighieri, 1265–1321—Influence. I. Title. PQ4385.U5L66 2011 851'.1—dc22

2010049951

∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

For Rosamund and Virgil

I was glad to find him black, I have no prejudice against his color.

—Frederick Douglass on the statue of St. Peter in the Vatican

“I had some curiosity in seeing devout people going up to the black statue of St. Peter — I was glad to find him black, I have no prejudice against his color—and kissing the old fellow’s big toe, one side of which has been nearly worn away by these devout and tender salutes of which it has been the cold subject” (Life and Times of Frederick Douglass577). For images of the bronze statue, and a discussion of its color and material, as well as its attribution to Arnolfo di Cambio (1232?–1302), see Calvesi,Treasures of the Vatican28–31.

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1 Canonicity, Hybridity, Freedom 1 Sailing with Dante to the New World 12 The Dante Wax Museum on the Frontier, 1828

15

1 Colored Dante 23 Dante the Protestant 26 Abolitionists and Nationalists, Americans and Italians H. Cordelia Ray, William Wells Brown 50

37

2 Negro Dante 65 Educating the People: From Cicero to Du Bois 66 Spencer Williams: African American Filmmaker at the Gates of Hell 72 Dante meets Amos ’n’ Andy 79 Ralph Waldo Ellison’s Prophetic Vernacular Muse 87

3 Black Dante 105 LeRoi Jones,The System of Dante’s Hell106 A New Narrative Model 137 Amiri Baraka: From Dante’s System to the System

144

viii

Contents

4 African American Dante 155 Gloria Naylor,Linden Hills156 Multicolored, MulticulturalTerza Rima174 Toni Morrison,The Bluest Eye183 Dante Rap 188

5

Poets in Exile

Notes 209

201

Bibliography 241

Index 269

a b o u t t h e w i l l i a m a n d k a t h e r i n e d e v e r s s e r i e s i n d a n t e a n d m e d i e v a l i t a l i a n l i t e r a t u r e

The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies at the University of Notre Dame supports rare book acquisitions in the university’s John A. Zahm Dante collections, funds visiting professorships, and supports electronic and print publication of scholarly research in the field. In collaboration with the Medieval Institute at the university, the Devers program initiated a series dedicated to the publication of the most significant current scholarship in the field of Dante stud- ies. In 2011, the scope of the series was expanded to encompass thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italian literature. In keeping with the spirit that inspired the creation of the Devers program, the series takes Dante and medieval Italian literature as focal points that draw to- gether the many disciplines and lines of inquiry that constitute a cultural tradition without fixed boundaries. Accordingly, the series hopes to illuminate this cultural tradition within contemporary critical debates in the humanities by reflecting both the highest quality of scholarly achievement and the greatest diversity of critical perspectives. The series publishes works from a wide variety of disciplinary viewpoints and in diverse scholarly genres, including critical studies, commentaries, editions, reception studies, translations, and conference proceedings of exceptional im- portance. The series enjoys the support of an international advisory board com- posed of distinguished scholars and is published regularly by the University of Notre Dame Press. The Dolphin and Anchor device that appears on publications of the Devers series was used by the great humanist, grammarian, editor, and ty- pographer Aldus Manutius (1449 –1515), in whose 1502 edition of Dante (second issue) and all subsequent editions it appeared. The device illustrates the ancient proverbFestina lente,“Hurry up slowly.”

Zygmunt G. Bara ´ nski, Theodore J. Cachey, Jr., and Christian Moevs,editors