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American apocalypse: race and revelation in American literature, 1919-1939
Griffin, Jared Andrew
Griffin, Jared Andrew
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[Fort Worth, Tex.] : Texas Christian University,
Date
2009
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Abstract
While many studies place masculinity and whiteness in Modernist contexts, and other studies isolate the function of apocalypse in Modernism, American Apocalypse" is the first study to understand how literary Modernism, American whiteness, and apocalypse function together to reinscribe American racial hierarchies in interwar American literature. By intersecting the fields of Modernism, whiteness, masculinity, Biblical studies, and adaptation theory, my dissertation argues how writers and visual artists contrive normative American whiteness through the use of the apocalyptic motif and its literary equivalent, epiphany.^In religion and in literature, apocalypse seeks to reveal a hidden, more powerful reality, and I argue how Modernist writers adapt the apocalypse to define whiteness in an increasingly multi-racial America.^What makes American whiteness especially normative and powerful is its organicism--its ability to mask itself as an element of the demi-monde in order to assert itself more powerfully in literary epiphanies. I survey Modernist American literature and various visual adaptations to show how writers apocalyptically inscribe whiteness with its properties of universality and masculinity. Chapter 1 explores the dialectic of American whiteness and apocalyptic themes of hiddenness and revelation conjured by the brief allusions in F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Offshore Pirate" to Anatole France's The Revolt of the Angels.^Chapter 2 turns to the contrast of Biblical apocalyptic motifs in the American rural and urban narratives of Zora Neal Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, and John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer.^Chapter 3 explores the apocalyptic relationship of American white masculinity and American place in Zane Grey's The Vanishing American, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, and George S. Schuyler's Black No More. Chapter 4 isolates the roles of irony and parody in constructions of American whiteness in Sherwood Anderson's Dark Laughter, William Faulkner's Mosquitoes, and Ernest Hemingway's The Torrents of Spring. I end the dissertation with a brief analysis of Humphrey Bogart's role as Frank Taylor in the anti-nativist film Black Legion and Santa Claus in John Henrik Clarke's "Santa Claus is a White Man" to show ultimately how the American process of becoming raced is inseparable from apocalyptic discourse."--Abstract.
Contents
Subject
Subject(s)
Apocalypse in literature.
American literature 20th century History and criticism.
Racism in literature.
Racism Religious aspects Christianity.
Race awareness.
Whites Race identity United States.
Modernism (Literature)
Masculinity in literature.
Masculinity United States.
American literature 20th century History and criticism.
Racism in literature.
Racism Religious aspects Christianity.
Race awareness.
Whites Race identity United States.
Modernism (Literature)
Masculinity in literature.
Masculinity United States.
Research Projects
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Dissertation
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Department
English