For the writer/anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, humor offered "a way out of no way, " helping African American culture survive the harsh realities of life. The humor in Hurston's writing was a vehicle for subversive observations on intolerable conditions, yet it also provided a joyous commentary on the paradoxically creative and exuberant folk culture of an oppressed people. John Lowe explores the comic elements of Hurston's fiction in the first book-length critical study to draw on her entire body of work. Tracing connections between Hurston's life and the cultural, historical, and literary events that affected her, Lowe reveals the sources of her humor and its serious purposes by using social science humor theory, American studies, feminist theory, Bakhtin, and close readings of Hurston's fiction, nonfiction, manuscripts, and letters. Lowe also shows how Hurston balanced her levity with a resonant cosmic language drawn largely from African and African American religious imagery.
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"Brilliantly explores the comic elements of Zora Neale Hurston's fiction in the first book-length study to draw on her entire body of work." -- AFRAM Newsletter. "The most important booklength contribution to Hurston scholarship since Robert Hemenway published his biography in 1978." -- Will Brantley, Contemporary Literature
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
For many years, Hurston wandered from job to job, city to city, first as a lady's maid with a Gilbert and Sullivan company, and then on her own. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
comic creativity, negro humor, black folk culture, female rivalry, tuh git, gourd vine, folk humor, joking relationships, big nigger, black folklore, lak dat, role humor, folk language, way humor Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Tea Cake, Dust Tracks, African American, Van Vechten, Zora Neale Hurston, New York, Missie May, United States, Harlem Renaissance, Mule Bone, Hurston Collection, Joe Clarke, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Richard Wright, University of Florida Library, Jim Meserve, John Pearson, Laura Lee, Alain Locke, John Hurston, Langston Hughes, Mary Helen Washington, Ole Massa, Alf Pearson, Alice Walker New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
For many years, Hurston wandered from job to job, city to city, first as a lady's maid with a Gilbert and Sullivan company, and then on her own. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
comic creativity, negro humor, black folk culture, female rivalry, tuh git, gourd vine, folk humor, joking relationships, big nigger, black folklore, lak dat, role humor, folk language, way humor Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Tea Cake, Dust Tracks, African American, Van Vechten, Zora Neale Hurston, New York, Missie May, United States, Harlem Renaissance, Mule Bone, Hurston Collection, Joe Clarke, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Richard Wright, University of Florida Library, Jim Meserve, John Pearson, Laura Lee, Alain Locke, John Hurston, Langston Hughes, Mary Helen Washington, Ole Massa, Alf Pearson, Alice Walker New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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- American Literature (Widener Library Shelflist, Nos. 26 and 27) by Richard De Gennard on 10 pages
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston on 10 pages
- Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston on 6 pages
- Seraph on the Suwanee by Zora Neale Hurston on 6 pages
- The Gilded Six-Bits (Perfect Presents Story-Gifts) by Zora Neale Hurston on 4 pages
See all 100 books this book cites
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