Reviews for Ralph Waldo Emerson

The average rating for Ralph Waldo Emerson based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-06-20 00:00:00 Theresa Crumpton This "casebook" consists of an introduction, a brief autobiographical article by Hurston, and seven critical articles. The most important and best selection is Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s "Zora Neale Hurston and the Speakerly Text", a chapter from his book The Signifying Monkey, which takes up about a third of this collection and deals with the "voice" of the novel and its relation to oral culture; it also contains a very useful close reading and commentary. The last article in the book, Daphne Lamotte's "Vodou Imagery, African-American Tradition, and Cultural Transformation in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God" was also quite interesting. The other five were less worthwhile, full of empty "literary theory" jargon and mainly criticizing Hurston for not having written another sort of novel altogether, one more explicitly ideological (either in respect of race or of feminism.)

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-08 00:00:00 Randal Gilbert I'll admit, at first I did not think I was going to like this book at all.. but I ended up really enjoying it. It is a book that pretty much everyone should be able to relate to in someway. I really liked reading about Janie becoming more mature and starting to figure things out for herself... True my mind was blown about the way her first marriage ended, but I loved learning about her love of her third husband.