New Essays on Their Eyes Were Watching God

The American Novel series provides students of American literature with introductory critical guides to the great works of American fiction. Each volume begins with a substantial introduction by a distinguished authority on the text, giving details of the novel's composition, publication history, and contemporary reception, as well as a survey of the major critical trends and readings from first publication to the present. This overview is followed by a group of new essays, each specially commissioned from a leading scholar in the field, which together constitute a forum of interpretive methods and prominent contemporary ideas on the text. There are also helpful guides to further reading. Specifically designed for undergraduates, the series will be a powerful resource for anyone engaged in the critical analysis of major American novels. After years of neglect, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God has now achieved a position of prominence in the American literary canon. In the introduction to this volume Michael Awkward provides an overview of the critical reception of Hurston's novel from the largely dismissive reviews that accompanied its publication in 1937, to factors that helped revive interest in Hurston in the late 1960s, to the recent recognition of Their Eyes Were Watching God as an important American novel. The other essays in the volume discuss Hurston's sophisticated use of black folklore, the autobiographical resonances in the novel, Hurston's definition of the relationship between black artists and the Afro-American masses, and the usefulness of feminist modes of inquiry. The collection offers suggestive means by which to approach Hurson's compelling exploration of a black woman's extended search for self and community.