Charles W. Chesnutt | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 30 pages of analysis & critique of Charles W. Chesnutt.

Charles W. Chesnutt | Criticism

This literature criticism consists of approximately 30 pages of analysis & critique of Charles W. Chesnutt.
This section contains 8,076 words
(approx. 27 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Charles Duncan

SOURCE: Duncan, Charles. “Telling Genealogy: Notions of the Family in The Wife of His Youth.” In Critical Essays on Charles W. Chesnutt, edited by Joseph R. McElrath Jr., pp. 281-96. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1999.

In the following essay, Duncan discusses Chesnutt's probing of race consciousness in the United States and the manner in which the writer's short stories add a “stanza” to the genealogical poem formed by black American literature.

Any consideration of the literary output of Charles W. Chesnutt must, of course, acknowledge race as a defining feature. Certainly, Chesnutt exhaustively probed the matter, examining in great detail both the sources of race consciousness in the United States and the far-reaching consequences of what has become our prolonged national mediation on the issue. As a means of exploring the broad social and cultural implications of post-Reconstruction race relations, his fictions, especially the works collected in...

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This section contains 8,076 words
(approx. 27 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Critical Essay by Charles Duncan
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Critical Essay by Charles Duncan from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.