The second volume in a ground-breaking trilogy on Afro-American literature, The Signifying Monkey explores the relationships between the African and Afro-American vernacular traditions and black literature, elaborating a new critical approach located within this tradition that allows the black voice to speak for itself. Looking at the ancient poetry and myths found in African, Latin American, and Caribbean culture - and particularly at the Yoruba trickster figure of Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey, whose myths help articulate the black tradition's theory of its literature - Gates uncovers a unique system of interpretation and a powerful vernacular tradition, that came with black slaves to the New World.
- ISBN13 9780195060751
- Publish Date 14 December 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 30 July 2015
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Paperback
- Pages 318
- Language English