The Practice of Apocalyptic Writing in African American Literature, 1829-1927
Date of Award
Spring 1-1-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
African American Studies
First Advisor
Goldsby, Jacqueline
Abstract
"The Practice of Apocalyptic Writing" examines the cyclical appearance of apocalypse in African American literary history at moments of acute eschatological and political disappointment. I argue that apocalypse persists in African American literature because black writers fashion it into a practice to confront the bewildering conditions of African American (un)freedom across the long nineteenth century. Leveraging the agential and temporal ambiguities that are central to apocalyptic writing, the writers I follow enact apocalypse in four distinct ways: as a revelation, event, genre, and hermeneutic. I track these uses to articulate a robust understanding of African American apocalyptic writing that can attend to its manifold forms and formulations. I make legible the theodicean inquiry at the heart of David Walker's Appeal (1829, 1830), the fleeting, fugitive, and furtive visions of black sanctuary in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "The Party" (1896), Sutton E. Griggs' novel Imperium In Imperio (1899), and Pauline Hopkins' serial novel Of One Blood (1902-1903), and the epistemological work of affective sound in Angelina Weld Grimké’s play Rachel (1916) and James Weldon Johnson's poetry collection God's Trombones (1927). In poetry and prose, on page and stage, and as they call forth the past and herald the future, these writers leave behind a remarkable record of imagination and innovation. This literature is not just a record of practice, but theory as well. In their concerted efforts to find possibilities for black life capable of interrupting the terrible trajectory of their presents, the African American apocalypticists in this study posit new understandings of freedom and collectivity to bridge the chasm between the world as it is and the world as it could be.
Recommended Citation
Lee, Jeong Yeon, "The Practice of Apocalyptic Writing in African American Literature, 1829-1927" (2025). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 1529.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/1529