W.E.B. Du Bois

Although in the past commentators on the writing of W. E. B. DuBois have concentrated upon his historical and sociological works, some recent critics are intrigued by his fictional presentation of the black adventure in America. Most of this new critical interest centers upon his trilogy, The Black Flame (1957-1961), a historically based saga of the Mansart family. DuBois' first novel, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911), is, nonetheless, equally interesting in its artistic presentation …

…ctional working out of this problem in American racial history. Its understandings are long-held concerns of DuBois; its symbolic structure is his attempt at an artistically effective framework for presenting his convictions about social, political, and economic tensions, North and South, black and white. Arlene A. Elder, "Swamp Versus Plantation: Symbolic Structure in W. E. B. Du Bois' The Quest of the Silver Fleece," in Phylon, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, December, 1973, pp. 358-67. Reproduced by permission.