To consider Frederick Douglass as an autobiographer, it is useful to examine each of his three autobiographical texts with a view to drawing some conclusion about their relation to one another, and about the relation of the author to each one. It seems likely that the shifting of Douglass' narrative stance is an index of his intellectual…

Students and teachers need to discuss authorial intent to understand some literary works on their own terms--this is particularly true in the case of Carson McCullers. McCullers' works can be understood as having a rich foundation of authorial intent based on the writer's central experience, as a Southern woman, of gender. The central importance…

Black autobiography can only be viewed sensibly in the classroom if an attempt is made to come to terms with the social and historical milieu in which the work was produced and with the persona and ethos of the writer. Critical failure to do so puts critic and text at a serious disadvantage because such failure restricts critical vision to the…