Racial Blasphemies: Religious Irreverence and Race in American Literature

by Michael L. Cobb

Overview

Racial Blasphemies, using critical race theory and literary analysis, charts the tense, frustrated religious language that saturates much twentieth-century American literature. Michael Cobb argues that we should consider religious language as a special kind of language - a language of curse words - that furiously communicates not theology or spirituality as much as it signals the sheer difficulty of representing race in a non-racist manner on the literary page.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415971263
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/13/2004
Series:	Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michael L. Cobb is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto. His essays on race, sexuality, and literature have appeared in Callaloo, GLQ, and the University of Toronto Quarterly.

Table of Contents

IntroductionChapter One: Painfully Obvious: Nakedness and Religious Words in Go Tell It on the MountainArresting Whiteness: Religious History and Local Color in Wise BloodChapter Three:She Was Something Holy in a Vulgar Place: The Resanguination of the Word in Brown Girl, BrownstonesChapter Four:Actual Sacrilege: The Blasphemous Narration of Race in Light in August