Ruins Amidst Ruins
Black Classicism and the Empire of Slavery
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3274255 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Levi Barnard (College of Wooster, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 86 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 361-389 |
| Publication date | 2014-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9831 • E-ISSN: 1527-2117 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00029831-2647027 |
| OpenAlex | W2034043058 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 32 |
While scholars have taken an increasing interest in the ways writers of the African diaspora have appropriated, revised, and otherwise intervened in the Western classical tradition, this scholarship has yet to fully articulate a cohesive theory of the political implications of black classicism as a literary and historiographical practice. This essay works toward such a theory by delineating a continuous tradition of black classicism as political engagement and historical critique across two centuries, from the early antebellum period through our contemporary moment, and situating key literary figures-most prominently Charles Chesnutt-within this tradition. Chesnutt and others (Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Toni Morrison among them) adapt and revise multiple mythic traditions-ancient and modern, "African" and "American," "black" and "white"-to counter an exceptionalist view of American history. These writers oppose exceptionalism by linking the United States to a broader and deeper history defined by slavery, empire, and ruin, while at the same time offering a prophetic vision of a future beyond the "empire of slavery
American exceptionalism · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Classicism · Diaspora · Empire · Exceptionalism · Historiography · Literature · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Race, History, and American Society
To wake the nations
Afrotopia
"Americans as They Really Are"
The Communist Manifesto
Unspeakable Things Unspoken
Crossroads in the Black Aegean
Afro-Greeks
African American Writers and Classical Tradition
Clotel, or the President's Daughter
The Marrow of Tradition
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
The American Aeneas
Liberation Historiography
Empire as a Way of Life
The Founders and the Classics
Classica Americana
Re-rooting the classical tradition
An Exemplary Citizen
A Future Beyond Empire
Novel Evidence for Roman Slavery
Civil Rights and the Lincoln Memorial
Classica Americana
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
The Political Unconscious
The Golden Age of the Classics in America
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,13 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2018 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |