The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism
"Apart from suggesting new ways of looking at black literature, this original work is a singular contribution to linguistics, anthropology and rhetoric. Notwithstanding the considerable resources upon which he bases his case, Gates works with a lightness of touch and a style of reasoning that makes the exercise of following the construction of his argument most exciting and provocative."--The Tribune"Copiously researched, re-orients our understanding of American culture and letters."--Uzoma Esonwanne,University of Michigan"Perhaps the most important critical statement regarding the rhetorical underpinnings of a black narrative discourse. For a general graduate course on cultural theory, I have found no better introduction text on the topic."--David William Foster, rizona State University"An important book....The Signifying Monkeydisplays an impressive array of scholarship coupled with a wide-ranging knowledge of diverse materials and a visible creative energy which synthesises these into a coherent and convincing thesis....an immensely stimulating work which deserves a wide readership."--Sandra Harris,Reviews in American Studies"Eclectic, exciting, convincing, provocative, challenging....Gates gives black literature room to breathe, invents interpretive frameworks that enable us to experience black writing rather than label it in terms of theme or ideology.  From this perspective his book is a generous, long-awaited gift....Like great novels that force us to view the world differently, Mr. Gates' compelling study suggests new ways of seeing."--John Wideman,The New York Times Book Review"Like the African-American trickster figure who circumscribes the shifting center of this most impressive work, Henry Louis Gates resists simplification.... Gates has provided the foundation for a potentially accessible, politically useful, and academically sophisticated discipline of "comparative black literature."  He will clearly play an important role in determining whether that discipline realizes its potential."Journal of English and Germanic Philology"Brilliantly original.  Besides the work of Houston Baker, I cannot think of a more exciting reassessment of black literature that has been published in many years.The Signifying Monkeyhas the feel of a seminal work, likely to reshape the course of black American literary criticism for years."--The Washington Post Book World"The appearance ofThe Signifying Monkey[is] one of the most significant events in the development of [African-American] studies in the next decade.  Bold, ambitious, original....Brilliant...[it] deserves to be read widely."--W.J.T. Mitchell, Editor,Critical Inquiry"The Rosetta Stone of the American multi-cultural renaissance."--Ishmael Reed"Breath-taking in the scope of its argument and in the energy and insight that it brings to reading individual texts, the matrix of the [African-American] tradition, and the Signifyin(g) practice that binds the 'Afro' to the 'American' in [African-American] writing and speaking."--James Olney,Louisiana State University