A Bibliography of the Works of Captain Charles Johnson. Philip Gosse

AbstractIn Being and Race Charles Johnson compares a writer working with traditional forms to a martial artist who “honors the form” of his predecessors. In his 1982 novel Oxherding Tale Johnson honors the form of a number of traditional fictional genres, including the slave narrative, the picaresque novel, the philosophical novel of ideas, and Zen texts such as koans, sutras, and the twelfth-century graphic narrative, the “Oxherding Pictures.” Calling his novel a “slave narrative that serves as the vehicle for exploring Eastern philosophy,” Johnson alludes to Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist texts, as well as to Western literary and philosophical works, to dissolve the dualistic thinking at the heart of what he calls “the samsara of racial politics.” To be free of the illusory nature of “ontological dualism,” however, one must journey through stages of increasing awareness, admirably depicted in the ten illustrations of the “Oxherding Pictures.” From seeking a self (ox) that one thinks one has lost, to glimpsing the self that is first elusive and finally illusory, the seeker comes to realize that all identities are constructed and therefore temporary, including such notions as “race” and “self.” Like some biracial Everyman, Johnson’s narrator may not complete the journey by the end of the novel but he discovers much about the insubstantiality and inter-connectedness of himself in the world along the way.

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Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066-1154, II, Regesta Henrici Primi, 1100-1135. Charles Johnson , H. A. Cronne

Speculum ◽

10.2307/2849143 ◽

1957 ◽

Vol 32 (2) ◽

pp. 370-372

Author(s):

Sidney R. Packard

Keyword(s):

Charles Johnson

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Charles Johnson

Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0146 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Keith Byerman

Keyword(s):

Charles Johnson

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The Satire of Black Post-Blackness

10.5406/illinois/9780252041006.003.0006 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Margo Natalie Crawford

Keyword(s):

21St Century ◽

Black Arts Movement ◽

Ishmael Reed ◽

Charles Johnson ◽

Amiri Baraka ◽

Black Arts ◽

Cultural Productions ◽

Editorial Cartoons ◽

Paul Beatty

The fifth chapter argues that feeling “black post-black” is a disorienting situation that lends itself to satire. Crawford analyzes the ways in which satire has begun to define 21st century African American cultural productions as both blackness and whiteness are satirized. The satire of the Black Arts Movement is shown to be much more invested in satirizing whiteness as opposed to the 21st century post-black tendency to foreground the satirizing of blackness. In addition to the analysis of novels, drama, and poetry, this chapter also uncovers the role of satire in editorial cartoons included in Black World, one of the key journals of the Black Arts Movement. This chapter foregrounds the satire of Charles Johnson, Carlene Hatcher Polite, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Percival Everett, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, and others.

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