The Cambridge Companion to Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison’s classic 1952 novel Invisible Man is one of the most important and controversial novels in the American canon and remains widely read and studied. This Companion provides an introduction to this influential and significant novelist and critic and to his masterpiece. It features essays by leading scholars, a chronology and a guide to further reading. The essays reveal alternative dimensions of Ellison\'s art radiating out from Invisible Man into other domains - technology, political theory, law, photography, music, religion - and recover the compelling urgency and relevance of Ellison\'s political and artistic vision. Since Ellison’s death his published oeuvre has been expanded by several major volumes - his collected essays, the fragment of a novel, Juneteenth (1999), letters and short stories - examined here in the context of his life and work. Students and scholars of Ellison and of American and African-American literature will find this an invaluable and accessible guide.

• Provides essays by leading scholars on this key American novelist • Includes considerations of his entire oeuvre • Offers perspectives on both his posthumous work Juneteenth and his masterpiece The Invisible Man

List of figures; List of contributors; Chronology; Introduction: Ellison’s joking Ross Posnock; 1. Ralph Ellison’s invented life: a meeting with ancestors Lawrence Jackson; 2. Ellison and the black Church: the gospel according to Ralph Laura Saunders; 3. Ellison, photography and the origins of invisibility Sara Blair; 4. Ralph Ellison’s music lessons Paul Allen Anderson; 5. Ralph Ellison’s constitutional faith Gregg Crane; 6. Ralph Ellison and the politics of melancholia Anne Anlin Cheng; 7. Invisible Ellison: the fight to be a Negro leader Tim Parrish; 8. Ellison’s experimental attitude and the technologies of illumination John S. Wright; 9. Female iconography in Invisible Man Shelly Eversley; 10. Chaos not quite controlled: Ellison’s uncompleted transit to Juneteenth Kenneth W. Warren; 11. Ralph Ellison, Hannah Arendt and the meaning of politics Ross Posnock; 12. Dry bones Eric J. Sundquist; Selected bibliography and suggestions for further reading; Index.

\'… all literature and humanities collections should purchase this fascinating volume.\' Reference Reviews