(A)historical Perspectives on African American Literature

Cultural valorization of African American literature has always been problematic because of political and socio-cultural issues. Nevertheless, it is arguable that the wide acceptance of the American New Criticism before and after 1945 additionally contributed to the exclusion of African American literature from the American canon. The paper focuses, however, on African American poetry and discusses the inapplicability of Cleanth Brooks's and Robert Penn Warren's literary theory, which ignores historical context, neglects writings by minorities as well as the voiceless and moreover, fails to assign any meaning to the political, social, and cultural background of a text. However, African American literature has been the most successful minority literature at infiltrating the mainstream canon, as well as at asserting an independent canon with a concomitant body of literary criticism. African American Criticism has struggled to negotiate the parameters between textual and sociological, political, ideological and cultural meanings. The paper also raises the question of African American poetry being an (a)historical entity and challenges the daring claim by Kenneth W. Warren that African American literature ended with desegregation. The attempt of the paper is to affirm the abiding vitality of African American literature considering it as an ahistorical category.