The Dark Arts: Religious Worldbuilding in African American Literature

This dissertation examines how African American authors construct unique Black religious worlds through their formation of a Black religious aesthetics of freedom, centered on feelings, emotions, and the senses. By analyzing works such as Martin R. Delany’s Blake; Or the Huts of America, Richard Wright’s Haiku, August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, and Jean Toomer’s Cane, this study illustrates how each author channels these feelings of freedom through their creation of what this dissertation calls literary rituals to infuse matter: nature, memory, geography, and the body, with distinctly Black sacred meaning. By grounding this dissertation’s sense of the religious in feelings, perception, and the senses, this dissertation demonstrates a robust range of religious and spiritual influences in African American literature, from the Black Church, Yoruba religion, Transcendentalism, and Zen Buddhism. This dissertation’s introduction explores Martin R. Delany’s utilization of a Masonic and Transcendentalist sense of intuition in Blake to have his characters perceive freedom in nature, Chapter One reads Richard Wright’s understudied Haiku through the lens of mid-century Beatnik Zen poetics and his essay “Memories of My Grandmother,” Chapter Two reads interprets the social drama of conflicting myths of the American Dream and the Middle Passage in August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean, and Chapter 3 interprets the ways that Jean Toomer makes the South both a sacred place and a pilgrimage site for Black people.