From "spy-glass" to "horizon": tracking the anthropological gaze in Zora Neale Hurston

Article Abstract:

Zora Neale Hurston faced considerable challenges as a social scientist and a novelist. It is particularly interesting to analyze these challenges within the context of discourses about African-American cultural development and attainment that were being read in the 1920s and 1930s. Her two identities and these discourses are clearly shown as coming together in her 1937 novel 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' Her position as an author is derived from shedding her black, female body in exchange for an artistic vision that came close to a universal transparency.

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"You heard her, you ain't blind": seeing what's said in 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.'(The Turn-of-the-Century American Novel)(Critical Essay)

Article Abstract:

The text of Zora Neale Hurston's 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' proposes a bridge between the dialectics of metaphor and metonymy. Since God is not a visible being, the book's title becomes an image of how African Americans are using a form of sight beyond the literal as well as the metaphorical, because God cannot be compared to anything else.

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The politics of genre in 'Beloved'

Article Abstract:

Toni Morrison, one of the most celebrated and prolific authors of the 20th century, insists her novel 'Beloved' must be located outside the bounds of literature. The book addresses a racial culture Morrison believes is unavailable to novels and novelists, described as "preliterate readers" and defined by vernacular language.

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