Something inside so strong: Affirmations of the spiritual in African American literature

Because of their unique history in the United States, African Americans have always seemed to depend on their relationship to the spiritual for survival in this country. As far back as the mid-1700s with their forced entrance and enslavement, African Americans have leaned on their spirituality as an agent for survival and deliverance, as their literature documents. Based on African American literature's solid Biblical tradition, I propose an approach to reading African American literature that emphasizes and affirms spirituality, where spirituality is defined as an enduring quality that transcends sacred walls to inhabit the everyday lives of everyday people. Because of its Biblical foundation, this approach "may be the most pervasive and significant influence in the creation and development of African American literature" since the Bible has served the literary imaginations of many if not all African American writers. My literary focus begins where Benjamin Mays left off in his study of Negro literature and its views of God, in 1937 with Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. I go on to discuss Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, David Bradley's Chaneysville Incident and Toni Morrison's Jazz. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on each primary text's view of God while Chapters 4 and 5 go beyond views of God to understanding God's ways. I close the dissertation with comparisons across gender lines and generation gaps.;The methodology that I used to produce these readings began by first examining the dominant traditional approaches to African American literature, in order to provide a frame and a justification for the approach that I adopt since it is my claim that spirituality should not be isolated to the lonely halls of a sacred building but interact in the everyday secular-sacred lives of its people. Following this examination, I carve out a place for a spiritual approach to reading African American literature before I model this approach in the body of the dissertation. This approach to reading African American literature emphasizing and affirming spirituality accommodates all of the above theories but "protects [the literature] from academic expediency" (Barksdale 3).