For many years, the Negro as theme has been appreciated by both black and white novelists; thus, numerous scholarly studies have been published on blacks in American literature. However, an area that has received only a limited amount of critical treatment is Afro-American drama, though blacks have been writing plays as early as 1848 with William Wells Brown's The Escape, or A Leap for Freedom. / Black male dramatists, such as Langston Hughes, Ossie Davis, James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones (Baraka), and Ed Bullins, have been recognized in anthologies and critical studies but, apart from Lorraine Hansberry, seldom has a black female dramatist been given serious critical treatment. / This study examines the images of black men and black women in plays since the 1950's by Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Barbara Molette, Martie Charles, and Ntozake Shange. Five images of black men recur in plays by these black women: the black revolutionist, the black youth in search of his manhood, the black assimilationist, the absent black patriarch, and the black man as insensitive beast. / Whereas the images of black men, in the main, were negative, the images of black women in the selected plays of black women were nearly all positive, such as the evolving black woman, the black matriarch, and the black woman as upholder of racial pride. The black woman as destroyer of racial pride or the female black assimilationist is the only negative image of black womanhood. / This study not only examines the images of blacks which appear, but it also delves into the reasons for the appearance of these images in plays by black women. A socio-psychological approach, this study examines the visions of black women playwrights. / This study demonstrates that black women dramatists have different perspectives than black male dramatists have. Whereas many black male dramatists suggest through their images that black women's happiness or completeness hinges upon guidance from strong black men, the visions of black female dramatists included in this study suggest that many black women are forced to become self-sufficient because the black men who come into their lives will not or can not provide financial and emotional stability for them. Thus, this study grew out of a need to demonstrate that the works of black women dramatists contain valuable insights about black life and that their visions, though they may be different from black male dramatists and white authors who write about blacks, deserve to be examined. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-07, Section: A, page: 3104. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_74202 |
| Contributors | BROWN, ELIZABETH., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 165 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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