In the middle of a 1945 review of Bucklin Moons Primer for White Folks, Ralph Ellison proclaims that the time is right in the United States for a new American humanism. Through exhaustive research in Ralph Ellisons Papers at the Library of Congress, I contextualize Ellisons grand proclamation within post-World War II American debates over literary criticism, Modernism, sociological method, and finally United States political and cultural history. I see Ellison's American humanism as a revitalization of the Latin notion of litterae humaniores that draws heavily on Gilded Age American literature and philosophy. For Ellison, American artists and intellectuals of that period were grappling with the countrys primary quandary after the Civil War: an inability to reconcile Americas progressive vision of humanism with the legacy left by chattel slavery and anti-black racism. He saw writers like Mark Twain, Stephan Crane, Henry James, George Washington Cable and others attempting to represent a different version of the human in literature while confronting the various forces that the Civil War unleashed upon American life.
As the Cold War and Civil Rights era reached their crescendo, Ellisons attachment to the Gilded Age ossified. By the late 60s, it took the romantic form of aesthetic and political conservatism. This process is part of his participation in what Francis Saunders called the Cultural Cold War against communism. For many including Ellison this participation made their aesthetic investment in modernism commensurate with their anti-communist ideology. In foregrounding the Cold War, I want to emphasize that the US States intervention into the sphere of culture is a watershed moment in Americas conceptualization of Western humanism. The CIA and the State Departments role in funding academic literary and cultural periodicals, art festivals, fellowships and other institutions of knowledge during the Cold War is a chapter of American intellectual life that shaped Ellisons world as well as those of his contemporaries. Just as importantly, this moment illuminates the key roles African-American intellectuals played in Americas pursuit of humanism.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-06052008-203931 |
| Date | 03 November 2008 |
| Creators | Purcell, Richard Erroll |
| Contributors | Marcia Landy, Paul Bove, Jonathan Arac, Ronald Judy, Dennis Looney |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-06052008-203931/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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