The Absent Man

As the first African-American fiction writer to achieve a national reputation, Ohio native Charles W. Chesnutt (1858 1932) in many ways established the terms of the black literary tradition now exemplified by such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Charles Johnson. Following the highly autobiographical nonfiction produced by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other slave narrative writers, Chesnutt's complex, multi-layered short fiction transformed the relationship between African-American writers and their readers. But despite generous praise from W. D. Howells and other important critics of his day, and from such prominent readers as William L. Andrews, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Eric Sundquist in ours, Chesnutt occupies a curiously ambiguous place in American literary history. In The Absent Man, Charles Duncan demonstrates that Chesnutt's uneasy position in the American literary tradition can be traced to his remarkable narrative subtlety. Profoundly aware of the delicacy of his situation as a black intellectual at the turn of the century, Chesnutt infused his work with an intricate, enigmatic artistic vision that defies monolithic or unambiguously political interpretation, especially with regard to issues of race and identity that preoccupied him throughout his career. In this first book-length study of the innovative short fiction, Duncan devotes particular attention to elucidating these sophisticated narrative strategies as the grounding for Chesnutt's inauguration of a tradition of African-American fiction

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Craft · Literature · Narrative · American and British Literature Analysis · American Literature and Culture · History · Short Stories in Global Literature

• Race/Relations, Acts of Discernment, and Ethical Inquiry in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The House behind the Cedars

  Bettina Carbonell•African American Review•2012

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• The Talking Book and the Talking Book Historian

  Leon Jackson•Book history•2010

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• Time and mobility in the writing of Charles W. Chesnutt

  Otto Heim•Comparative American Studies An…•2003

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• The hard work of black play

  Shirley Elizabeth Thompson•Leisure Studies•2008

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• Who Owns the Whip

  Bill Hardwig•African American Review•2002

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