{"title":"\"Tapestries of Time\" and Afrofuturist Horizons in William Demby's King Comus","authors":"Melanie Masterton Sherazi","doi":"10.1353/afa.2022.0023","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:William Demby's achievements as an innovator of Black experimental fiction are on full display in his final, posthumously published novel, King Comus, and warrant critical attention for their relevance to the temporal turn in Black studies and to the burgeoning transnational aesthetics of Afrofuturism. Demby's fiction both invites and refuses biographical readings; in King Comus, he playfully showcases the tension between the autobiographical and the fictional. Alongside the intimate and embodied, the novel brings together Demby's sustained interests in historical patterns and imbricated temporalities—from antiquity to the turn of the twenty-first century—which commingle without cohering in their ecstatic dynamism.","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2022.0023","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AMERICAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:William Demby's achievements as an innovator of Black experimental fiction are on full display in his final, posthumously published novel, King Comus, and warrant critical attention for their relevance to the temporal turn in Black studies and to the burgeoning transnational aesthetics of Afrofuturism. Demby's fiction both invites and refuses biographical readings; in King Comus, he playfully showcases the tension between the autobiographical and the fictional. Alongside the intimate and embodied, the novel brings together Demby's sustained interests in historical patterns and imbricated temporalities—from antiquity to the turn of the twenty-first century—which commingle without cohering in their ecstatic dynamism.
期刊介绍:
As the official publication of the Division on Black American Literature and Culture of the Modern Language Association, the quarterly journal African American Review promotes a lively exchange among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences who hold diverse perspectives on African American literature and culture. Between 1967 and 1976, the journal appeared under the title Negro American Literature Forum and for the next fifteen years was titled Black American Literature Forum. In 1992, African American Review changed its name for a third time and expanded its mission to include the study of a broader array of cultural formations.