The Signifying Monkey : a Theory of African American Literary Criticism.

Preface to the Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary Edition -- Preface to the First Edition -- Introduction: Hip-Hop and the Fate of Signifying -- A Myth of Origins: Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey -- The Signifying Monkey and the Language of Signifyin(g): Rhetorical Difference and the Orders of Meaning -- Figures of Signification -- The Trope of the Talking Book -- Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text -- On "The Blackness of Blackness": Ishmael Reed and a Critique of the Sign -- Color Me Zora: Alice Walker's (Re)Writing of the Speakerly Text -- Afterword to the Twenty-Fifth-Anniversary Edition: Skipping Gates and Breaching Walls.

Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as ""eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative"" and in The Washington Post Book World as ""brilliantly original, "" Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s The Signifying Monkey is a groundbreaking work that illuminates the relationship between the African and African-American vernacular traditions and black literature. It elaborates a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Examining the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture, Gates uncovers a unique system for in.

Print version record.

Includes index.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide