|
|
Article: The vanguard of modernity: Richard Wright's The Outsider.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Texas Studies in Literature and Language
- Article date:
- September 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press). This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
(1)
When Richard Wright became nationally known through the publication of Native Son in 1940, he had already assumed a "central place in the radical political culture of the international communist movement." (1) Moreover Native Son and Black Boy influenced the existentialist philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, who shared Wright's emphasis on alienated consciousness. (2) During the 1940s Wright's public affiliations continued to move away from the American scene that had formed the context for his early writing. He resigned from the Communist Party in 1944, citing its control of his political and aesthetic decisions; he formed connections with ...