A habit of translation: Race and aesthetics in the poetry of Rita Dove, Phillis Wheatley and Melvin B. Tolson (Helen Vendler)

My dissertation investigates and contests the assumption, common in criticism of African American literature, that there is a "universal" literary language to which black writers have access if they transcend their particular subject positions. Because of the frequency with which critics validate the work of writers who, ostensibly, transcend race, I call their interpretation a "habit of translation." Although critics often intend their assertions about a black author's transcendence of race to be a compliment, they undermine the African American tradition of writing that foregrounds race. Further, they perpetuate the myth that race has played no real part in the formation of the mainstream American literary tradition.; In my dissertation, I compare the work of Rita Dove to black poets such as Melvin B. Tolson, Phillis Wheatley and others to look at racial specificity as a necessary element in the writer's craft---rather than as a rupture in a neutral, seamless language of art. In Chapter 1, I document and interrogate critics who argue that Dove transcends race. Chapter 2 investigates Helen Vendler's The Given and the Made, which focuses on the imperative to transcend race in a chapter on Dove. Using Dove's theory of "a poetic consciousness of occupied space" and Stuart Hall's theory of cultural identity routes (as opposed to roots), I begin to dismantle the habit of translation that privileges this transcendence in the work of writers of color.; In Chapter 3, I explore the congruence of classical and black literary traditions through the theme of abduction in Greek myth and tragedy used by Dove and Wheatley in their poetry. Chapter 4 considers the theme of exile---literary and social---in the poetry of Dove and Tolson. I close with Chapter 5, which looks at Dove's most recent volume, On the Bus with Rosa Parks . As in the preceding chapters of my dissertation, I offer readings that recognize art is situated at the conjunction of the racial and the aesthetic.