Jump at the Sun
Zora Neale Hurston's Cosmic Comedy
The acclaimed look at how the iconic author blended a comic sensibility into her art
Paper – $25
978-0-252-06637-5
Publication Date
Paperback: 12/01/1996
About the Book
For Zora Neale Hurston, humor offered “a way out of no way” that helped African Americans and Black culture survive the harsh realities of life. John Lowe explores the comic elements found throughout Hurston’s entire body of published and unpublished work. The humor in Hurston’s writing was a vehicle for subversive observations on intolerable conditions, yet it also provided a joyous commentary on the creative and exuberant Black folk culture around her. Lowe traces the connections between Hurston’s life and the cultural, historical, and literary events that affected her. His analysis uses social science humor theory, African studies, feminist theory, Bakhtin, and close readings to reveal the sources of her humor and its serious purposes. Lowe also shows how Hurston balanced her levity with a resonant cosmic language drawn largely from African and African American religious imagery.About the Author
John Lowe is Warren Professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the editor of Approaches to Teaching Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and Other Works and Louisiana Culture from the Colonial Era to Katrina.Reviews
"Appreciative of Hurston's 'bodacious' humor, Lowe argues that she is 'a profoundly serious, experimental, subversive, and therefore unsettling artist.' . . . Strongly recommended."-- Choice"A trailblazing effort, a work that will enrich our understanding of Hurston's fiction."--William R. Nash, The Southern Literary Journal
"The most important book-length contribution to Hurston scholarship since Robert Hemenway published his biography in 1978."--Will Brantley, Contemporary Literature
Blurbs
"Lowe has written what may well be the Hurston book for the years to come."--Werner Sollors, author of The Temptation of Despair: Tales of the 1940s
"Lowe's study smartly begins with the assumption that one reason for the stunning popularity of Hurston's work is the verve with which it addresses serious subjects in a comic style."--Cheryl A. Wall, editor of Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women
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