We Wear The Mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Politics of Representative Reality

Introduction: Dunbar and the Ethics of Black Identity

F© 2010 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2010000360 isbn 978-1-60635-046-1 Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data We wear the mask : Paul Laurence Dunbar and the politics of representative reality / edited by Willie J. Harrell Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-60635-046-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) ∞ 1. Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872–1906—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 1872–1906—Language. 3. African Americans in literature. I. Harrell, Willie J., Jr. ps1557.w4 2010 811'.4—dc22 2010000360 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available. 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1 Contents F Introduction: Dunbar and the Ethics of Black Identity Willie J. Harrell Jr. ix Part I. Poetry 1 The Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Influence of African Aesthetics: Dunbar’s Poems and the Tradition of Masking Lena Ampadu 3 2 National Memory and the Arts in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s War Poetry Nassim W. Balestrini 17 3 “Sing a Song Heroic”: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Mythic and Poetic Tribute to Black Soldiers Sharon D. Raynor 32 4 Minstrelsy and the Dialect Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar Elston L. Carr Jr. 49 5 Dunbar, Dialect, and Narrative Theory: Subverted Statements in Lyrics of Lowly Life Megan M. Peabody 59 Part II. Race, Rhetoric, and Social Structure 6 Rhetorical Accountability: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Search for “Representative” Men Coretta M. Pittman 73 vi contents 7 “Jump Back, Honey, Jump Back”: Reading Paul Laurence Dunbar in the Context of the Century Magazine Mark Noonan 82 8 The Glamour of Paul Laurence Dunbar: Racial Uplift, Masculinity, and Bohemia in the Nadir Matt Sandler 98 9 Kemble’s Figures and Dunbar’s Folks: Picturing the Work of Graphic Illustration in Dunbar’s Short Fiction Adam Sonstegard 116 10 “We Know de Time Is Ouahs”: The Power of Christmas in the Literature of Paul Laurence Dunbar Amy Cummins 138 11 Creating a Representative Community: Identity in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s In Old Plantation Days Willie J. Harrell Jr. 154 Part III. Novels, Identity, and Representation 12 Memory and Repression in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods Jeannine King 173 13 A Little Something More Than Something Else: Dunbar’s Colorist Ambivalence in The Sport of the Gods Dolores V. Sisco 191 14 Mobile Blacks and Ubiquitous Blues: Urbanizing the African American Discourses in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s The Sport of the Gods Michael P. Moreno 210 contents vii 15 “With Myriad Subtleties”: Paul Laurence Dunbar’s Constructions of Social Identity in The Sport of the Gods Jayne E. Waterman 230 16 “Nemmine. You Got to Git Somebody Else to Ring Yo’ Ol’ Bell Now”: Nigger Ed and the Rhetoric of Local Color Realism and Racial Protest in Dunbar’s The Fanatics Willie J. Harrell Jr. 242 Contributors 255 Index 259 Introduction Dunbar and the Ethics of Black Identity Willie J. Harrell Jr. F I want to know whether or not you believe in preserving by Afro-American . . . writers those quaint old tales and songs of our fathers which have made the fame of Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, Ruth McEnery Stuart and others! Or whether you like so many others think we should ignore the past and all its capital literary materials. —Paul Laurence Dunbar, letter to Alice Ruth Moore, April 17, 1895 [Dunbar’s] brilliant and unique achievement was to have studied the American negro objectively, and to have represented him as he found him to be, with humor, with sympathy, and yet with what the reader must instinctively feel to be entire truthfulness. —W. D. Howells, introduction to Lyrics of Lowly Life (1896) Of the innumerable accomplishments thatsecuredPaulLaurenceDunbar ’sfootingasAmerica’s“poetlaureateoftheNegroRace,”perhapsnoneismore significant than the fact that he fashioned two distinct voices in his works—the traditional English of the conventional poet and the renowned, redolent dialect of African Americans at the turn of the century. Between the publication of his first collection of poetry, Oak and Ivy, in 1892 and his death from tuberculosis and the publication of his last volume of poetry, Joggin’ Erlong, in 1906, Dunbar would write three librettos, eleven volumes of poetry, four novels, songs, and more than a few short...