| Abstrakt: |
This section introduces the book The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, by Charles W. Chesnutt. In the African-American tradition this book stands out as a major literary production from the period that Chesnutt named Post-bellum-Pre-Harlem. The tales contained in this volume largely follow a single formula, which might be labeled the plot of cultural tourism. These tales are programmed to produce a display of standard, correct, literate speech that then calls up a different speaker, the bearer of a local dialect barbarously deviant from official literate English yet fully expressive on its own terms, who is invited to produce his varnacular for the other person's hearing. To understand the nature of Chesnutt's work as an author it is essential to grasp that the formula he subscribes to here is by no means his own invention. It represents a convention already massively conventional when he adopted it, a formula fully established in the literary system of his time. |
