Book contents
- Richard Wright in Context
- Richard Wright in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Richard Wright’s Works: A Chronology
- Introduction Richard Wright’s Luck
- Part I Life and Career, Times and Places
- Part II Social and Cultural Contexts
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Contexts
- Part IV Reputation and Critical Reception
- Chapter 29 Wright’s Many Lives and the Travails of Literary Biography
- Chapter 30 Contemporary Reception
- Chapter 31 Native Son on Stage and Screen
- Chapter 32 Wright’s Critical Reputation, 1960–2019
- Chapter 33 Richard Wright in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter
- Index
Chapter 29 - Wright’s Many Lives and the Travails of Literary Biography
from Part IV - Reputation and Critical Reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2021
- Richard Wright in Context
- Richard Wright in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Richard Wright’s Works: A Chronology
- Introduction Richard Wright’s Luck
- Part I Life and Career, Times and Places
- Part II Social and Cultural Contexts
- Part III Literary and Intellectual Contexts
- Part IV Reputation and Critical Reception
- Chapter 29 Wright’s Many Lives and the Travails of Literary Biography
- Chapter 30 Contemporary Reception
- Chapter 31 Native Son on Stage and Screen
- Chapter 32 Wright’s Critical Reputation, 1960–2019
- Chapter 33 Richard Wright in the Era of #BlackLivesMatter
- Index
Summary
When Richard Wright died in Paris on November 28, 1960, scholar Michel Fabre was ready to embark on a dissertation that would deal with the life and work of the metaphysical poet John Donne. His tutor at the Sorbonne redirected his project toward Richard Wright, since a PhD dissertation, or “state thesis,” could only deal at the time with a deceased author. Such is the genesis of The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright, Fabre’s biography that led him to found and head the field of African American Studies in France while being recognized internationally as a leading scholar on Wright. For her part, Margaret Walker, an acclaimed writer and scholar of Southern literature, knew Wright in Chicago in the 1930s where both were members of the Federal Writers’ Project and the South Side Writers Group. Her own biography, Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius, subtitled A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at his Work (1988), is a very personal text that contrasts with Fabre’s more traditional endeavor, shaped as the latter is by the format of the French university system.
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- Information
- Richard Wright in Context , pp. 307 - 317Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021