Ralph Ellison Invisible Man Essay
A Portrait of the Artist as an Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison and the Authentication of Fiction Through Autobiography
Rob van der Mei (3143724)
BA Thesis, English Language and Culture
Utrecht University
April 15, 2010
Dr. Derek Rubin (supervisor)
Table of Contents
Introduction
1
1. Genuine Forgeries: Fictional Autobiographies and Autobiographical Fictions
5
2. Dominating Reality: Invisible Man and the Rise of the Nonfiction Novel
11
3. American Realism, Modernism and the Literary Ancestors of Ralph Ellison
16
Conclusion
20
Bibliography
22
1
Introduction
Ralph Ellison and the “Autobiographication” of Fiction
In the summer of 1954, two years after the publication of Invisible Man, Ralph Waldo …show more content…
While Eliot’s work taught him the importance of working within a tradition of, and interacting with, authors past and present, from Hemingway he learned about the value of autobiography in writing credible fiction.
Ellison’s apparent candor regarding his indebtedness to his literary “ancestors” was thus in all likelihood influenced by Eliot, who in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” argues that “no artist of any art … has his complete meaning alone” and that “[h]is significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists” (2320). As a result, Ellison, standing on the shoulders of such giants as Hemingway, Eliot and Joyce, was hesitant to acknowledge his own literary successes. After all, to write in a tradition is, as Eliot remarks, to approve of the idea that “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past” and therefore also to be aware of the accompanying difficulties and responsibilities. At the same time, artists must be conscious, Eliot notes, of the fact that the dead writers are “that which they know,” despite their “’remote[ness] from us because
Ralph Ellison and the Authentication of Fiction Through Autobiography
Rob van der Mei (3143724)
BA Thesis, English Language and Culture
Utrecht University
April 15, 2010
Dr. Derek Rubin (supervisor)
Table of Contents
Introduction
1
1. Genuine Forgeries: Fictional Autobiographies and Autobiographical Fictions
5
2. Dominating Reality: Invisible Man and the Rise of the Nonfiction Novel
11
3. American Realism, Modernism and the Literary Ancestors of Ralph Ellison
16
Conclusion
20
Bibliography
22
1
Introduction
Ralph Ellison and the “Autobiographication” of Fiction
In the summer of 1954, two years after the publication of Invisible Man, Ralph Waldo …show more content…
While Eliot’s work taught him the importance of working within a tradition of, and interacting with, authors past and present, from Hemingway he learned about the value of autobiography in writing credible fiction.
Ellison’s apparent candor regarding his indebtedness to his literary “ancestors” was thus in all likelihood influenced by Eliot, who in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” argues that “no artist of any art … has his complete meaning alone” and that “[h]is significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists” (2320). As a result, Ellison, standing on the shoulders of such giants as Hemingway, Eliot and Joyce, was hesitant to acknowledge his own literary successes. After all, to write in a tradition is, as Eliot remarks, to approve of the idea that “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past” and therefore also to be aware of the accompanying difficulties and responsibilities. At the same time, artists must be conscious, Eliot notes, of the fact that the dead writers are “that which they know,” despite their “’remote[ness] from us because