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94 3 / Mapping the Peaks and Valleys of the African American Novel (1853–1962) In order to do justice to their subject matter, in order to depict Negro life in all of its manifold and intricate relationships, a deep, informed and complex consciousness is necessary, a consciousness which draws for its strength upon the fluid lore [vernacular tradition] of a great people, and moulds this lore with the concepts that move and direct the forces of history today. richard wright “Blueprint for Negro Writing” I N contrast to The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition, which closely examines the symbolic and vernacular patterns of selected novels published between 1853 and 1962, this chapter will primarily map the peaks and valleys of the tradition of the African American novel and highlight its different branches during this time. The first third of the chapter includes the period from the pre–Civil War years through the U.S entry into World War I. The next third, moving from the war years to the early 1950s, covers modernism , the Harlem Renaissance, with its search for new modes of narrative, and the eventual triumph of naturalism spearheaded by Richard Wright. The chapter concludes with a consideration of myth, legend, and ritual in the novels of the fifties. Early Historical Romance, Social Realism, and Beyond In tracing the movement of the early African American novel toward social realism and beyond, I have discovered that its history conveniently divides into three periods: antebellum and Civil War novels (1853–65), postbellum, Reconstruction , and post-Reconstruction novels (1865–1902), and pre–World War I novels of the Old Guard (1902–17). With the exception of the novels by Frank Johnson Webb (1828–94) and Harriet E. Wilson (ca. 1824–28–ca. 1863), and the three American editions of Clotel, the periods designated also suggest the major thematic shift from slavery to caste, a corresponding shift in setting from rural to urban, and the first experiments with naturalism. 95 Mapping the Peaks and Valleys (1853–1962) Antebellum and Civil War Novels (1853–1865) Prior to the Civil War, several novels by Americans of African ancestry were either published in book form or serialized in periodicals after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. The four most important of these texts reveal the impact of the burning social issues of the decade on the culture and character of African Americans: abolitionism, education, temperance, women’s rights, and commercialism. Despite the laws against teaching blacks, for example, some slaves were receiving education in various parts of the South. Memoirs, diaries, and slave narratives tell of some whites, especially women and children with mixed motives, teaching slaves the rudiments of reading and writing. The cases of Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown, even though they were largely self-educated, are perhaps the most widely known. If literacy was a rare pearl that grew slowly among antebellum blacks, books published by blacks were rarer still. The first two novels, Brown’s Clotel; or The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States (1853) and Frank Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends (1857), were published in London. The second two, Martin R. Delany’s Blake; or The Huts of America: A Tale of the Mississippi Valley, the Southern United States and Cuba (1859), and Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig; or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, In a Two-Story White House, North. Showing That Slavery’s Shadows Fall Even There (1859), are the first novels published by black Americans in the United States. Delany’s appeared serially, and Wilson’s was printed privately, the first bound novel published in the United States rather than England. Brown’s editions of Clotel appeared in the United States serially in 1860–61 and in book form in 1864 and 1867.1 Of these four narratives, Blake is by far the most politically radical, Clotel the most romantic, The Garies and Their Friends the most novelistic, and Our Nig the most original. Whereas Blake is messianic in theme and characterization, the protagonist a symbolic response to the calls to rebellion and self-reliance of black abolitionist orators such as David Walker in 1829 and Henry Highland Garnet in 1843,2 Clotel employs realistic details, slave narrative anecdotes, and romantic subplots in the service of historical romance. In verisimilitude, coherence of plot, and delineation of character, The Garies and Their Friends re...

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