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"The true and stirring stuff of which Romance is born": "Dark Princess" and the revolutionary potential of literary form.

Rather than functioning as propaganda or pastiche, W. E. B. Du Bois's 1928 novel "Dark Princess" actively engages with issues of form and literary tradition in order to question the relationship between fictional modes and social and racial progress. In this novel, Du Bois uses the different literar...

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Published in:Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 36; no. 4; pp. 62 - 77
Main Author: Bufkin, Sydney
Format: Literary Criticism
Published: Indiana University Press Summer2013
Subjects:
Dark Princess (Book)
Du Bois, W. E. B., 1868-1963
Modernism (Literature)
Romanticism
Literary form
Realism
20th century (Literary period)
Realism (Literary period)
Modernism (Literary period)
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Summary:Rather than functioning as propaganda or pastiche, W. E. B. Du Bois's 1928 novel "Dark Princess" actively engages with issues of form and literary tradition in order to question the relationship between fictional modes and social and racial progress. In this novel, Du Bois uses the different literary modes available at the time—most particularly social realism, modernism, and romance. In particular, "Dark Princess's" engagement with the romantic tradition indicates a deliberate and sustained effort to theorize romance as integral to the novel's utopian future and to enact that theory through the novel's formal structures.