Dissertation

Ralph Ellison's early life and intellectual foundation, 1913-1941

Jackson, Lawrence Patrick

1997

Overview

My dissertation, \"Ralph Ellison's Early Intellectual Foundation, 1913-1941,\" explores the life and education of the American writer Ralph Ellison. My thesis exposes his early intellectual and artistic formation in close detail, using many previously unavailable resources, in the effort to present a comprehensive view of his life. The biography combines the techniques of literary criticism, history, biography and psychoanalysis. I do not accept Ellison's popular autobiographical essays in his collections Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986) at face value; nor do I impose the novel Invisible Man as a template through which to view or elaborate upon the author's life. In my dissertation I have crafted a careful analysis of Ellison's literary and intellectual education, paying close attention to psychological issues involving fathers, father figures, and the author's construction of manhood. Chapter I, \"Geography Is Fate,\" focuses on Lewis Ellison's military career and the settler life of blacks in early Oklahoma, detailing the father-son bond, which remained significant to Ellison throughout his career. Chapter II, \"Renaissance Man,\" explores Ellison's early itinerant years in Oklahoma City in an extremely poor family, headed by his mother Ida Lucy Ellison. Chapter III, \"Horn of Plenty\" displays Ellison's artistic facility in the context of the meteoric rise of the Oklahoma City \"Blue Devils\" jazz band. Chapter IV, \"Tuskegee and the Wasteland,\" discusses Ellison's college experience in four sections. Beginning with a pivotal train ride to Alabama, Ellison became a student at a school known for intellectual conformity. Despite the limitations, he studied in the music conservatory, performed in radical theater and joined an elite intellectual circle. Chapter V \"One-Winged Flying,\" brings Ellison to New York City, where he met leftist poet Langston Hughes and entered avant-garde artistic and intellectual circles. Chapter VI, \"Is Politics an Expression of Love?,\" follows Ellison after his return to New York City from Dayton, Ohio in 1938, exploring his work on the Federal Writers Project and his close relationship with Richard Wright.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: American history / American literature / American studies / Biographies / Dunbar, Paul Laurence (1872-1906) / Ellison, Ralph (1914-1994) / Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882) / Hersey, John (1914-1993)
• ISBN: 9780591517750, 0591517752