From Behind the Veil
A Study of Afro-American Narrative
This pioneering study of Afro-American narrative is far more critical, historical, and textual than biographical, chronological, and atextual. Robert Stepto asserts that Afro-American culture has its store of canonical stories or pregeneric myths, the primary one being the quest for freedom and literacy. This second edition includes a new preface and an afterward entitled "Distrust of the Reader in Afro-American Narratives."
"Uniquely penetrating and precise. . . . The strength of Stepto's method is that it allows us to see black prose fiction as a self-enclosed entity, innovating and elaborating within its own traditions, without resorting to extraliterary arguments."
-- Essence
"No doubt about it. This is a major book."
-- American Literary Scholarship
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