| The dissertation expands several areas of literary study: African-American literature, American literature, and the history of satire. The project subjects numerous texts by prominent African-American authors, including George Schuyler, Toni Morrison, John Oliver Killens, William Melvin Kelley, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Greg Tate, Trey Ellis, Derrick Bell and Ishmael Reed, to critical examination and analysis as part of not only African-American Literary and cultural traditions, but also as part of the extensive history of satire. Most of these texts have been analyzed as components of (or tangential to) different phases of the African-American literary tradition, or have been divorced from their African-American cultural contexts. None, however, have never been placed squarely within their cultural contexts and examined as satire as part of an extended project. The dissertation explores the degree to which each of these satirists stands between numerous political and cultural positions, thereby satirizing all of them. African-American satire, therefore, frequently enables us to see the cultural and ideological diversity not only within African-American communities but also within the United States as a whole. |
