Representations of history in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Vol.36,No.1(2010)

Klara Szmańko

Stable URL (handle):
http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/105085

PDF
Abstract
Through the first person narrator, who names himself the Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison sheds light on the plurality and heterogeneity of history, exposing mechanisms accompanying the creation of the official version and recovering multiple histories of African American individuals who are excluded from this official version. The official version of history records just moods, trends and patterns rather than individual stories, resembling a "song with turgid, inadequate words" (Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man [1952] 1972: 335). Individual stories of minor actors of history, their words and deeds are unregistered by the pompous blare of trumpets, trombones and saxophones. The Invisible Man assumes the task of retrieving these suppressed voices.

Keywords:
inside – outside; intersection of history and geography; the constructedness, plurality, selectivity and partiality of history

Pages:
191–203
References

Butler, Robert (1990) ' The Plunge into Pure Duration: Bergsonian Visions of Time in Ellison's Invisible Man.' CLA Journal 3(3), 260–279.

Butterfield, Stephen (1974) Black Autobiography in America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Ellison, Ralph (1972) Invisible Man [1952]. New York: Vintage.

Ellison, Ralph (1972) Introduction. Invisible Man. By Ralph Ellison. New York: Vintage, v-xix.

Ellison, Ralph (1966) ' Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke'. Shadow and Act. New York: Signet, 61–73.

Ellison, Ralph (1999[1970]) ' What America would Be Like Without Blacks'. In: Roediger, David (ed.) Black on White. New York: Schocken Books, 160–167.

Flowers, Sandra Hollin (1996) African American Nationalist Literature of the 1960s. Pens of Fire. New York: Garland.

Foucault, Michel (1980) ' The Eye of Power'. In: Gordon, Colin (ed.) Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings. Brighton: Harvester, 146–165.

Gates, Henry Louis (1989) The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP.

Kirby, Kathleen (1993) ' Thinking through the Boundary: The Politics of Location, Subjects and Space.' boundary 2 20(2), 73–189.

Lee, James Kyung-Jin (2002) ' Where the Talented Tenth Meets the Model Minority: The Price of Privilege in Wideman's Philadelphia Fire and Lee's Native Speaker'. Novel: A Forum on Fiction 35(2) and (3), 231–257.

Montrose, Louis A. (1989) ' Professing the Renaissance'. In: Veeser, H. Aram (ed.) New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 15–36.

Reed, Ishmael (1977) Interview with Ralph Ellison. Y' Bird 1(1), 126–159.

Rich, Adrienne (1986) ' Notes Toward a P olitics of Location'. Blood, Bread and Poetry. New York: Norton, 210–231.

Singer, Marc (2003) ' "A Slightly Different Sense of Time:" Palimpsestic Time in Invisible Man'. Twentieth Century Literature 49(3) Autumn, 388–419.

Stepto, Robert (1991) From Behind the Veil. A S tudy of Afro-American Narrative. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Sylvander, Carolyn (1975) ' Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Female Stereotypes'. Negro American Literature Forum 9(3), 77–81. | DOI 10.2307/3041094

Tate, Claudia (1987) ' Notes on the Invisible Women in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man'. In: Benston, Kimberly W. (ed.) Speaking for You. The Vision of Ralph Ellison. Washington: Howard University Press, 163–172.

Taylor, Charles (1996) Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Van Deburg, William L., (ed.) (1997) Modern Black Nationalism. From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan. New York: New York UP.

Vogler, Thomas (1974) ' Invisible Man: Somebody's Protest Novel'. In: Hersey, John (ed.) Ralph Ellison. A Collection of Critical Essays. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 127–150.

Metrics

9

Views

0

PDF views

PDF