Global Ralph Ellison : Aesthetics and Politics Beyond US Borders Hardback

Edited by Tessa Roynon, Marc C. Conner

Part of the Race and Resistance Across Borders in the Long Twentieth Century series

Hardback

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Description

This essay collection begins the vast project that is the global history of Ralph Ellisonâ€™s life and work.

It examines how and why this avowedly Â«AmericanÂ» author read literature and scholarship from across the world and has in turn been widely read outside the borders of the USA.

How did Ellisonâ€™s encounters with the Â«internationalÂ» Henry James, the Cambridge Ritualists, the Roman poet Ovid and with Dostoevsky shape both the aesthetics and the politics of his own work? And what is the relationship between Invisible Man and the complex and always evolving political and cultural contexts of South Africa, the USSR and Russia, Germany and Japan since World War II?

Contributors from seven different countries â€“ based in Asia, Africa, Europe and the USA â€“ deploy significant archival research both in Ellisonâ€™s personal library and in the translation and reception histories of his iconic first novel.

This study of Â«the world in Ellison and Ellison in the worldÂ» initiates an important new approach in Ellison studies, illuminating hitherto hidden dimensions of the man and his writings.