Literary images of the mulatto in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature.

摘要

This literary analysis study evaluates how people of mixed race, or mulattos, have, historically, been represented in nineteenth and twentieth century American literature.; Chapter One focused on how negative attitudes about mulattos and interracial relationships are still realities in present-day. Also, discussion will take place on how negative stereotypes in contemporary mulatto literature may have their roots in the negative depictions of blacks represented in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century English literature and drama. Chapter One ends with a brief explanation of how post-colonialism will be applied to the literary analysis that follows in chapters Two through Five.; In Chapter Two, analysis will be conducted on how the mulatto was represented as a superhuman race leader in the nineteenth century works of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frances Harper.; After this period, came the rise of the black bourgeoisie which was largely led by light-skinned blacks. In some cases, blacks with Caucasian features "passed" as whites on either a permanent or temporary basis. Chapter Three will focus on how these trends were reflected in the twentieth century novels written by Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, and Sinclair Lewis.; In Chapter Four, focus is shifted to how blacks, who aspired for "white" values, were ridiculed in the works of Zora Neale Hurston (Harlem Renaissance) and John O. Killens (Soul movement), and in Chapter Five, the "tragic mulatto" motif and its characteristics are analyzed in the works of William Wells Brown, Charles Chesnutt, Nella Larsen, and William Faulkner.; In conclusion, historical events that affected the mulatto from the 1940s to the present day are discussed, in addition to a general overview of how biracial subjects are still ostracized and stereotyped in contemporary American society.