Forms of Contention argues for the centrality of sonnet writing to African American poetry, focusing on significant sonnets, key anthologies, and critical debates about poetic form to show that the influence of black sonnet writers on each other challenges long-standing claims that sonnet writing is primarily a matter of European influence. The banishment of much nineteenth- and twentieth-century formal poetry from the black poetry canon in the 1960s because it was too "traditional" long concealed the African American sonnet's legacy. In the twenty-first century, the sonnet has blossomed as a black poetic form, even while sonnet writers rarely acknowledge the rich history of black sonnets. With digital technology, a century of sonnets published in African American newspapers has reemerged to reveal surprising patterns of influence.

Historically, academic study of African American literature has focused on four concerns: the historical and economic conditions of production and publication of black literature; the political and cultural importance of black literature in America; genres of and trends in black literature; and the nature of African American literature as reflective of the black experience. Hollis Robbins engages with these concerns while opening up a fifth conversation: auxiliary genealogies of influence for black aesthetic production that foreground form and that promote new conversations about form generally - namely, how exactly form enables participation and protest and the overthrow and undermining of aesthetic expectation. Thus, Robbins uses the sonnet as a case study for exploring the broader literary history of African American literature, offering a thorough analysis of the contentious relationship of an old-world poetic form to new world poetry.

About the Author
Hollis Robbins is the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Sonoma State University. She has edited or coedited five books on African American literature, including Penguin's The Portable Nineteenth Century African American Women Writers, and In Search of Hannah Crafts: Essays on the Bondwoman's Narrative, both with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; and The Selected Works of William Wells Brown, with Paula Garrett.


Book Information
ISBN 9780820357645
Author Hollis Robbins
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint University of Georgia Press
Publisher University of Georgia Press
Weight(grams) 375g