The coupling convention : sex, text, and tradition in Black women's fiction / Ann duCille.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-193) and index.

Print version record.

Generally thought of as a convention of the white middle class, the marriage plot has received little attention from critics of African-American literature. In this study, Ann duCille uses texts as diverse as William Well Brown's Clotel (1853) and Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) to demonstrate that the African-American novel, like its European and Amglo-American counterparts, has developed around the marriage plot-what she calls "the coupling convention." Exploring the relationship between racial ideology and literary and social conventions, duCille uses the coupling convention to trace the historical development of the African-American women's novel. More than just a study of the marriage tradition in black women's fiction, however, The Coupling Convention takes up and takes on many different meanings of tradition. It challenges the very notion of a single black literary tradition, or of a single black feminist literary canon grounded in specifically black female language and experience, as it explores the ways in which white and black, male and female, mainstream and marginalized "traditions" and canons have influenced and cross-fertilized each other

Conventional criticism and unconventional Black literature -- The coupling convention: novel views of love and marriage -- Literary passionlessness and the Black woman question in the 1890s -- Women, men, and marriage in the ideal estate -- Blues notes on Black sexuality: sex and the texts of the Twenties and Thirties -- The bourgeois, wedding bell blues of Jessie Fauset and Nella Larsen -- Stoning the romance: passion, patriarchy, and the modern marriage plot -- Conclusion: marriage, tradition, and the individualized talent.

English.

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