英语论文网

m come true. To buy landfrom Sutter’s brother is Boy Willie’s big dream. In the play, Boy Willie explains why he soyearns for the land:I get Sutter's land and I can go down and cash in the crop and get my seed. As long as I got theland and the seed then I'm alright. I can always get me a little something else. Cause that landgive back to you. I can make me another crop and cash that in. I still got the land and the seed.But that piano don't put out nothing else.You ain't got nothing working for you. ( Wilson 51)
........

II Calling onAfrican Spirituality.........21
2.1Rejectionof“theGodoftheSlaveholder”forSpiritualFreedom..........21
2.2 Revitalizing ofAfrican Traditional Rituals..........26
III Embracing ofAfrocentricAesthetics....31
3.1 Blues as “an Empowering Text” ofAfrican Americans’Experience...........31
3.2 Black English as a Unique Mark ofAfrican Americans......36

III Embracing of Afrocentric Aesthetics

As a self-claimed cultural nationalist, Wilson especially shows his “great concern overthe use of Afrocentric black cultural traditions in literary creation” (Liu 60). With a culturalnationalism, Wilson takes his plays to practice Afrocentric aesthetics to model AfricanAmericans with a sense of ethnic pride. Liu points out that Wilson’s use of Afrocentricaesthetics is a way to “construct their (the characters) and their race’s identities” and he thinksthe Afrocentric aesthetics Wilson used in his plays “guarantee the existence and developmentof the black race and their culture” (60).Wilson argues black people in America have a whole distinctive and separative way oflive from Anglo-Saxon. So the use of mainstream cultural values and criteria undoubtedlyleads to the devalues of African American model of expressions. Consequently, just as Barakadeclares African Americans are “ unconscious captive ” (qtd. in Leitch 86). Then how Wilsondoes to free African Americans from the “unconscious captive”. As a self-claimed culturalnationalist, Wilson believes in a world dominated by white culture “the black must be strongenough no only to survive but to re-establish his own identity and heritage which flowsunbroken from an African fountainhead” (qtd. in Fishman Joan 142). So he takes his plays totakes after the call for “profound articulation of the black tradition” (Lyons 6 ). In The PianoLesson Wilson takes full use of Afrocentric aesthetics which he defines as “field of mannersthat can sustain a man once he left his father’s house” (Lyons 6) such as blues and blackEnglish “ to change the images his people identify with, by asserting Black feelings, Blackmind, Black judgment” (qtd. in Leitch 86). By applying Afrocentric aesthetics, Wilsonabandons the judgment of the white world to voice African American culture in Americansociety.
........

Conclusion

In less than a decade, August Wilson is one of the most significant playwrights in thehistory of American theater and one of the most important contemporary African Americanwriters. As a self-claimed cultural nationalist Wilson absorbs nutrition from African Americanculture and traditions to manifest AfricanAmerican history and the distinctive culture.As a self-claimed cultural nationalist, Wilson rethinks the great migration in the play. Afterthe emancipation, a large number of southern blacks rushed to the northern cities to pursue theirAmerican Dreams. Undoubtedly, the