Playing the Changes: From Afro-modernism to the Jazz ImpulseIn Playing the Changes, Craig Hansen Werner presents a polyrhythmic approach to the continuities and discontinuities of the American literary tradition. He focuses on the relationship between two superficially distinct traditions: European (post)modernism and African American culture in both literary and musical forms. A primary contribution of Playing the Changes is its exploration of different "phrasings" of issues important to highly conscious African American artists from the late nineteenth century (Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman) to the 1990s (Toni Morrison's Jazz). |
Contents
The Framing of Charles W Chesnutt | 3 |
Endurance and Excavation AfroAmerican Responses to Faulkner | 27 |
The Brier Patch as Postmodernist Myth Morrison Barthes and Tar Baby AsIs | 63 |
On the Ends of AfroModernist Autobiography | 84 |
Black Dialectics Kennedy Bullins Knight Dumas Lorde | 103 |
Black Blues in the City The Voices of Gwendolyn Brooks | 142 |
Blues for T S Eliot and Langston Hughes Melvin B Tolsons AfroModernist Aesthetic | 162 |
Biggers Blues Native Son and the Articulation of AfroAmerican Modernism | 183 |
James Baldwin Politics and the Gospel Impulse | 212 |
Leon Forrest and the AACM The Jazz Impulse and the Chicago Renaissance | 241 |
The Burden and the Binding Song August Wilsons Neoclassical Jazz | 263 |
Improvisations toward a New Phrasing West Afrocentrism MetaFunk and the Interiors of Jazz | 288 |
Works Cited | 305 |
| 317 | |
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Common terms and phrases
AACM Absalom accept aesthetic African African-American Afro Afro-American culture Afro-American writers Afro-Modernist Afrocentric alienation American ancestors articulate artists ascent attempt audience Autobiography awareness baby Baldwin Baraka Bigger Black Arts Movement black community black music blues Brer Rabbit Brooks Brooks's Bullins Bullins's call and response Chesnutt Chicago complex concerns consciousness context create critical deconstruction developed discourse echoes Eliot Ellison emphasizes endurance Euro European-American excavation expression Faulkner Faulknerian focuses Forrest fragmentation gospel impulse Gwendolyn Brooks Harlem Gallery Hideho immersion implications individual is-ness Jadine jazz jazz impulse Langston Hughes literary masks minstrel modernism modernist Morrison Moses myth narrative Native Negro novel oppressive perspective phrase plantation play poem poetry political present provides racial racist reality recognizes relationship repressed repudiation revoices rhyme sense signifier social song specific Stepto structure T. S. Eliot tar baby tion Tolson Toni Morrison Uncle Remus understanding Valerian vision voice Wright