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The Signifying Modernist: Ralph Ellison and the Limits of the Double Consciousness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

William Lyne
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Abstract

Recent critical variations on Du Bois's formulation of the African American double consciousness provide new ways of examining Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man in relation to both modernism and the double consciousness itself. Read next to texts like The Art of the Novel and The Waste Land, Invisible Man shows a “signifying” stance toward modernism. At the same time, Ellison's book performs a profound critique of such double-voiced strategies as signifying and the blues.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 2 , March 1992 , pp. 319 - 330
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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