the signifying monkey by henry louis gates jr

By using these trickster figures as sources that contain profound, yet coded truths regarding black cultural expression and meaning, Gates creates a bridge between oral culture and critical interpretation, explaining that he hopes “to enrich the reader’s experience of reference and representation of connotation and denotation, of truth and understanding, as these configure in the black formal literary traditions and in the antics of two trickster figures found in black myths” (341). as points of conscious articulation of language traditions aware of themselves as tradition, complete with a history, patterns of development and revision, and internal principles of patterning and organization” (340-1). He starts with the comments of Labov that firmly establish this view of orality being central to the vernacular, but then turns to “two signal trickster figures, Esu-Elegbara and the Signifying Monkey. He is both acknowledging and deviating from a definition of black vernacular as a distinctly verbal/oral mode of expression. In fashioning his theory of an autonomously produced tradition of African American literature, one that does not gather its validity by measuring itself against the yardstick of white, Eurocentric standards of literary value (although he does acknowledge the relationships between these traditions), Gates is suggesting (while not always directly stating) several critical/conceptual moves:ġ. Gates offers a culturally distinctive “theory of reading,” one that might “allow the black tradition to speak for itself about its nature and various functions” (340). The book attempts to identify a theory of criticism that is inscribed within the black vernacular tradition and that in turn informs the shape of the Afro-American literary tradition.

The Signifying Monkey explores the relation of the black vernacular tradition to the Afro-American literary tradition. This opening selection from Gates’ 1988 book of African American literary criticism, The Signifying Monkey, establishes the idea of black vernacular as a framework through which to measure, analyze, explore, and perhaps most importantly, read, African American literature.

The signifying monkey by henry louis gates jr