The coupling convention sex, text, and tradition in Black women's fiction

Summary: Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts as diverse as William Well Brown's Clotel (1853) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Amglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot-what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the very notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other.

Record details

ISBN: 1429407808 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9781429407809 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 0195085094 (Paper)
ISBN: 9780195085099
ISBN: 0195079728 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 1280527021
ISBN: 9781280527029
ISBN: 9780195079722 (alk. paper)
ISBN: 0195079728 (alk. paper)
Physical Description: electronic resource
remote
1 online resource (ix, 204 p.)
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 1993.

Content descriptions

General Note:	CatBulkString:jan.10.13 Multi-User. CatMonthString:jan.13
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-193) and index.
Source of Description Note:	Description based on print version record.