Abstract

These classic essays by an important independent scholar cull the novels of the Afro-American writers James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison for their political meanings and provide interpretations of experience that suggest political meanings. Starting with philosopher Robin Collingwood's notion that "the historian and novelist have much in common for both attempt to define the largest lines of historical development," Kostelanetz deduces themes in the fiction that are then interpreted as intellectual history, a wholly original approach which no other scholarly work treating these books has taken.