Recovered From The Thirties: The Politics Of Periodization

This dissertation examines critical efforts to republish and reevaluate 1930s American writers. Following the women's, Civil Rights, New Left, gay and lesbian, and other social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, institutions of higher education underwent major transformations. These movements opened up new fields of scholarly inquiry, leading to the formation of interdisciplinary programs such as Women's Studies and Black Studies. In the field of literary studies, scholars extended this political critique to existing institutions, pursuing courses of curricular reform and developing new avenues of research into the cultures, histories, and literatures of marginalized groups. Literary recovery, the material practice and critical discourse of returning neglected authors and texts to print, is central to this larger institutional enterprise. "Recovered from the Thirties: The Politics of Periodization" focuses on a period (the 1930s) and three authors in particular-Tillie Olsen, Michael Gold, and Zora Neale Hurston- that have been the object of academic literary recovery. The 1930s period during which these writers were active witnessed the convergence of avant-garde aesthetic and mass cultural movements. From the radical proletarian movements of Olsen and Gold to the New Negro movement and folkloric projects of Hurston, these writers identified with, served as cultural authorities on, and represented (in their writings) marginal groups. While sharply different in their political positions-Gold was a lifelong Communist, Hurston a conservative Republican-these writers sought to culturally legitimate the experiences of proletarian subjects and other minorities. Falling out-of-print and excluded from dominant and mainstream literary histories, Gold, Olsen, and Hurston received renewed academic interest beginning in the 1960s, becoming, in their own right, representative subjects in alternative literary traditions. A definitive concern for literary recovery is the assertion of literary history as both a discursive and material process. This study pays close attention to the critical agendas that motivate the recovery of these authors as well as the mediums in which their writings are reissued. The analysis of these authors, from the perspective of literary recovery, thus allows for a reconsideration of general questions of literary interpretation including those of authorial identity and historical context