Black Frankenstein: The Making of an American Metaphor Contributor(s): Young, Elizabeth (Author) |
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ISBN: 0814797164 ISBN-13: 9780814797167 Publisher: New York University Press OUR PRICE: $30.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: August 2008 Annotation: In Black Frankenstein, Young tears apart and rearranges the monster we think we know into something entirely fresh and challenging. This excellent and provocative book offers a compelling lesson in the political and cultural uses of a metaphor organized by design, as well as unconsciously, into a racial paradigm. --Eric J. Sundquist, author of "Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America" For all the scholarship devoted to Mary Shelleys English novel "Frankenstein," there has been surprisingly little attention paid to its role in American culture, and virtually none to its racial resonances in the United States. In Black Frankenstein, Elizabeth Young identifies and interprets the figure of a black American Frankenstein monster as it appears with surprising frequency throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture, in fiction, film, essays, oratory, painting, and other media, and in works by both whites and African Americans. Black Frankenstein stories, Young argues, effect four kinds of racial critique: they humanized the slave; they explain, if not justify, black violence; they condemn the slaveowner; and they expose the instability of white power. The black Frankenstein monster has served as a powerful metaphor for reinforcing racial hierarchy--and as an even more powerful metaphor for shaping anti-racist critique. While illuminating the power of parody and reappropriation, Black Frankenstein tells the story of a metaphor that continues to matter to literature, culture, aesthetics, and politics. |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - Performing Arts | Film - History & Criticism - Art | Criticism & Theory |
Dewey: 810.935 |
LCCN: 2008008049 |
Series: America and the Long 19th Century |
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.9" W x 8.7" (0.95 lbs) 336 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: For all the scholarship devoted to Mary Shelley's English novel Frankenstein, there has been surprisingly little attention paid to its role in American culture, and virtually none to its racial resonances in the United States. In Black Frankenstein, Elizabeth Young identifies and interprets the figure of a black American Frankenstein monster as it appears with surprising frequency throughout nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture, in fiction, film, essays, oratory, painting, and other media, and in works by both whites and African Americans. |
Contributor Bio(s): Young, Elizabeth: - Elizabeth Young is Professor of English and Gender Studies at Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Disarming the Nation: Women's Writing and the American Civil War and co-author of On Alexander Gardner's ""Photographic Sketch Book"" of the Civil War. |