The Conjure Stories: A Norton Critical Edition / Edition 1

by Charles W. Chesnutt, Robert B. Stepto, Jennifer Rae Greeson

Overview

Fourteen conjure tales by one of America’s most influential African American fiction writers.

This Norton Critical Edition of The Conjure Stories arranges the tales chronologically by composition date, allowing readers to discern how Chesnutt experimented with plots and characters and with the idea of the conjure story over time. With one exception, the text of each tale is that of the original publication. (The text of “The Dumb Witness” was established from two typescripts held at the archives of Fisk University.) The stories are accompanied by a thorough and thought-provoking introduction, detailed explanatory annotations, and illustrative materials.

“Contexts” presents a wealth of materials chosen by the editors to enrich the reader’s understanding of these canonical stories, including a map of the landscape of the conjure tales, Chesnutt’s journal entry as he began writing fiction of the South, as well as writings by Chesnutt, William Wells Brown, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others, on the stories’ central motifs—folklore, superstition, voodoo, race, and social identity in the South following the Civil War.

“Criticism” is divided into two parts. “Early Criticism” collects critical notices for The Conjure Woman that suggest the volume’s initial reception, assessments by William Dean Howells and Benjamin Brawley, and a biographical excerpt by the author’s daughter, Helen Chesnutt. “Modern Criticism” demonstrates rich and enduring interest in The Conjure Stories with ten important essays by Robert Hemenway, William L. Andrews, Robert B. Stepto, John Edgar Wideman, Werner Sollors, Houston A. Baker, Eric J. Sundquist, Richard H. Brodhead, Candace J. Waid, and Glenda Carpio.

A Chronology of Chesnutt’s life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393927801
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/01/2011
Series:	Norton Critical Editions Series
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Charles W. Chesnutt was born in 1858 in Cleveland, Ohio. At the end of the Civil War, his parents returned to their native Fayetteville, North Carolina, where Charles attended a school run by the Freedmen’s Bureau. After serving as principal of the State Colored Normal School from 1880 to 1883, he abandoned both his teaching career and a South that was increasingly hostile to African Americans. Moving back to Cleveland, he practiced law, established a successful legal stenography firm, and began pursuing a career as a writer. His first story, “Uncle Peter’s House,” about a newly emancipated Black family whose home is burned down by the Ku Klux Klan, appeared in 1885. It introduced the themes of folk life, racial injustice, and social reform that he would explore in dozens of short stories, essays, and three novels. By the time he died in 1932, Chesnutt was widely recognized as the dean of African American fiction writers.

Robert B. Stepto is Professor of English, African American Studies, and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama, Blue as the Lake: A Personal Geography, and From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. Among his edited volumes are Chant of Saints: A Gathering of Literature, Art, and Scholarship; Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction; and Harper American Literature.

Jennifer Rae Greeson is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of Our South: Geographic Fantasy and the Rise of National Literature and of articles related to various aspects of American literature and culture.