Black Masks: Negro Characters in Modern Southern Fiction

A major exploration of an important topic of Southern literature—the Negro—during the most artistically productive period the American South has ever known. Every significant artist and innumerable minor authors of Southern Renaissance have discussed Negroes or have used Negro characters in their stories. Going beyond the study by Sterling Brown on Negro stereotypes, which summarizes patterns of characterization prior to 1930, Professor Tischler examines the changes apparent in the New South with this new, talented group of writers. The faithful retainer and the tragic mulatto are still around, but altered. The miserable freeman, the exotic primitive, and the comic Negro have virtually disappeared. The brute-Negro character has metamorphosed into the new Negro. And a number of new types have appeared, including the hero of the twenties, the black Christ, and the hero of the thirties, the black proletarian.

Professor Tischler concludes that the modern realist, naturalist, or symbolist is interested in exploiting Negro characters more fully than were older, more romantic authors. As mass-heroes or as symbols of alienation or of the search for identity, they are exciting material for literature. In addition, as reflections of changing attitudes and social patterns, they provide an interesting link between sociology and literature. The study therefore, although primarily concerned with literary judgments, also provides much interest to the historian, the sociologist, and the general reader.