Make bullet points for the main idea ARNOLD RAMPERSAD
WE.B. Du Bois as a Man of Literature
W View Henry James were of Nathaniel Hawdurne is equally true of WE & Du Bois our auder," James weste, must accept the awkward at well as the procedul alle est this baune, for he has the advantage of pointing dualle mond" Hawbone's moral was that "the flower of art blooms onl where the sell to deep, that it sakes a great dead of history to produce a litt marmure, die it seeds a complex social machinery to set a writer in motion te bine putation as a man of literature is surely the "awkward" side math game as the proocoons, and one meaning of his awkward side is essentia the came as I Haveline's (as James saw it), with an important difference. "L tlover of ars will bloom only where there is liberty or the memory of libe Dy hais underavond the need for justice in the growth of the flower of the same has not yor eme," he wrote in 1913, "for the great developi of American Negro literature. The economic stress is too great and the jerseyson son biser to allow the leisure and the poise for which liter calle Or, so James went on in the famous passage about Hawth "American civilization has hitherto had other things to do than to p
Bowers The other, more graceful sides of Du Bois's reputation vary w moude of each observer but rest somewhere in his pioneering and pe works of history and sociology and his decades of crusading jo
From American Literatury 51, no. 1 (March 1979), © 1979 by Duke University Pre
71ARNOLD RAMPERSAD
12 against necelavery in North Trained at and the University the South and in some respecte similar Fisk, Harvard, among Mack the Nodesys, graphs, and hudens history and the most prominent place thinkers, so that the NAACP could write with justification in him by themselves created, what never existed before, a Negro intelligentsia, and have not read a word of his writings are his spiritual descendants" Certainly df Afro-American writers and the theme one may claim of Du Bois what has been written of the kno indirectly, been Sociologists Sidney and Beatrice Webb-that every creative writer who has touched on the held of sociology has, directly or But Du Bois ventured into the field of belles-lettres. And the t by them. dat 1934 disciples
accident but as part of the plan of his life. On his twenty-fifth birth (1893) he confided solemnly to his journal that "these are my plans to mak multitude of partly perκκά, a name in science, to make a name in art and thus to raise my race bibliography of his writings runs to some two thousand entries, out of s it is difficult to separate those completely untouched by his love of art. are poems enough for a slender volume, impressionistic essays, some verse drama, autobiographies, five novels there including a trilogy composed near his ninetieth birthday. Great reputations have been made of a smaller volume of writing, but most of this work has contributed little to Du Bois's fame. Indeed, his basic competence as a of literature has been challenged. An angry Claude McKay, singed by a Du Bois review of his first novel, informed him that "nowhere in your writing critic Arna Bontemps thought Du Bois unimaginative in that he leaned the Victorian in his toward. His first biographer Francis Broderick barely mentioned t literature writing and declared that Du Bois wanted "a literature of upliftin the genteel tradition." His second biographer, Elliott M. Rudwick, mention the creative work not at all. And though Du Bois called his second novel favorite book" among the two dozen or more he published, a major histori
of the black novel in America dismissed him as a "Philistine." Du Bois himself did not show great pride in this aspect of his work; was apologetic on the very few occasions he wrote of his efforts in literatu His first novel was "really an economic study of some merit" -the sum t of his commentary on the work; he was hesitant to write "me autobiography; Dark Princess was his favorite book but that remark is all ever ventured about the novel; his poems were "tributes to Beauty, unwo to stand alone." Nor was he always complimentary about actual achievem
- W.E.B. Du Bois is seen as a man of literature
- Du Bois's reputation as a man of literature is both awkward and essential
- Du Bois contributed to the development of American Negro literature
- Du Bois's reputation varies among observers, but is rooted in his pioneering and persuasive works of history and sociology
- Du Bois's writings created a Negro intelligentsia and influenced Afro-American writers
- Du Bois ventured into the field of belles-lettres, with a bibliography of writings that include poems, essays, verse dramas, autobiographies, novels, and more
- Some critics challenge Du Bois's competence as a man of literature, citing his lack of imagination and his leaning towards the Victorian tradition
- Du Bois didn't show great pride in his creative work and was hesitant to discuss it
- Despite some criticism, Du Bois's contributions to literature are acknowledged as having merit and significance.