"African American Literary Theory is an extraordinary gift to literary studies. It is necessary, authoritative and thorough. The timing of this book is superb!"

--Karla F.C. Holloway, Duke University "The influence of African American literature can be attributed, in no small part, to the literary theorists gathered in this collection. This is a superb anthology that represents a diversity of voices and points of view, and a much needed historical retrospective of how African American literary theory has developed."

--Marlon B. Ross, University of Michigan "A volume of great conceptual significance and originality in its focus on the development of African American literary theory."

--Farah Jasmine Griffin, University of Pennsylvania African American Literary Theory: A Reader is the first volume to document the central texts and arguments in African American literary theory from the 1920s through the present. As the volume progresses chronologically from the rise of a black aesthetic criticism, through the Blacks Arts Movement, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, and the rise of queer theory, it focuses on the key arguments, themes, and debates in each period. By constantly bringing attention to the larger political and cultural issues at stake in the interpretation of literary texts, the critics gathered here have contributed mightily to the prominence and popularity of African American literature in this country and abroad. African American Literary Theory provides a unique historical analysis of how these thinkers have shaped literary theory, and literature at large, and will be a indispensable text for the study of African American intellectual culture. Contributors include Sandra Adell, Michael Awkward, Houston A. Baker, Jr., Hazel V. Carby, Barbara Christian, W.E.B. DuBois, Ann duCille, Ralph Ellison, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Addison Gayle Jr., Carolyn F. Gerald, Evelynn Hammonds, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, Stephen E. Henderson, Karla F.C. Holloway, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Joyce A. Joyce, Alain Locke, Wahneema Lubiano, Deborah E. McDowell, Harryette Mullen, Larry Neal, Charles I. Nero, Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Marlon B. Ross, George S. Schuyler, Barbara Smith, Valerie Smith, Hortense J. Spillers, Sherley Anne Williams, and Richard Wright.

托馬斯•卡萊爾（Thomas Carlyle，1795—1881），英國19世紀文壇巨擘，政治思想傢、曆史學傢、文學傢。著有《席勒傳》《舊衣新裁》《法國大革命》《英雄與英雄崇拜》等。

卡萊爾在19世紀振聾發聵的正義之聲不僅是為英國民族的振興而發，更是為整個人類文明的進步而發。他對人類文明的憂思、對人類終極幸福的預示，顯示瞭他不僅是他所生活的那個時代的智者，站在未來之世界看，更是一位跨時代的思想啓迪者。——卡萊爾在《文明的憂思》中充分顯示瞭他的這兩種能力，無愧於他“為後代而活著”的先知的稱號。