Abstract
The determinants of and variations in processes of cultural valorization are of increasing interest to sociologists. In the case of high-culture literary texts, the central evaluation process takes place through canon formation. We explore the mechanisms of canon formation and of cultural valorization processes more generally by analyzing the critical history of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Published in 1937 to lukewarm reviews, the novel is currently considered a core canonical text. We specify three processes involved in the reconstruction of Hurston's novel and in the establishment of the African American literary canon: (1) the application of new evaluative criteria, (2) the reconstruction of textual meaning through newly available interpretative strategies, and (3) changes in the institutional and organizational environment that allowed new claims on high-status critical positions to be made by those previously outside the literary hierarchy. The implications of this study for theoretical models of cultural valorization in sociology are considered.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Arnold, Matthew 1949 The portable Matthew Arnold. Lionel Trilling, ed. New York: Viking.
Baker, Houston., Jr. 1984 Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baker, Houston A., Jr. and Patricia Redmond, eds. 1989 Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baxandall, Michael 1988 Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Becker, Howard S. 1982 Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Beisel, Nicola 1993 “Moral versus art: Censorship, the politics of interpretation, and the Victorian nude.” American Sociological Review 58:145–162.
Bethel, Lorraine 1982 “'This infinity of conscious pain:' Zora Neale Hurston an the Black female literary tradition.” In Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith (eds.), But Some of Us Are Brave: 176–188. Old Westbury, NY: Feminist Press.
Binder, Amy 1993 “Constructing racial rhetoric: Media depictions of harm in heavy metal and rap music.” American Sociological Review 58:753–767.
Bobo, Jacqueline 1989 “Sifting through the controversy.” Callaloo 12:332–342.
Booklist 1937 “Review of Their Eyes Were Watching God.” (October 15):71.
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
1985 “The market of symbolic goods.” Translated by Rupert Swyer. Poetics 14:13–44.
Brooks, Cleanth 1975 The Well-Wrought Urn. New York: Harvest-Harcourt.
Brown, Sterling 1937 “Luck is Fortune.” Nation (October 16):409–10.
Brown, Sterling A., Arthur P. David, and Ulysses Lee, eds. 1941 The Negro Caravan: Writings by American Negroes. New York: Citadel Press.
Campbell, Finley C. 1977 “Prophet of the storm: Richard Wright and the radical tradition.” Phylon 38:9–23.
Carby, Hazel V. 1987 Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chandler, James 1984 “The Pope controversy: Romantic poetics and the English canon.” In Robert von Hallberg (ed.), Canons: 197–225. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Christian, Barbara 1980 Black Feminist Criticism. New York: Pergamon Press.
Corse, Sarah M. 1995 “Nations and novels: Cultural politics and literary use.” Social Forces 73:1279–1308.
1997 Nationalism and Literature: The politics of culture in Canada and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Corse, Sarah M. and Saundra Davis Westervelt 1995 “Self, gender, and narrative reinter-pretation: The awakening of a feminist novel.” Unpublished manuscript. Department of Sociology, University of Virginia.
Crane, Diana 1987 The Transformation of the Avant-Garde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1992 “High culture versus popular culture revisited.” In Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier (eds.), Cultivating Differences: 58–74. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
DeNora, Tia 1991 “Musical patronage and social change in Beethoven's Vienna.” American Journal of Sociology 97:310–346.
DiMaggio, Paul 1982 “Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston.” Parts I and II. Media, Culture and Society 4:33–50, 303–320.
1987 “Classification in art.” American Sociological Review 52:440–455.
Entman, Robert 1991 “Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrast in narratives of the KAL and Iran Air incidents.” Journal of Communication 41:6–27.
Ferguson, Otis 1937 “You can't hear their voices.” The New Republic October 13:276.
Fiedler, Leslie 1966 Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein and Day.
Forrest, Ethel A. 1938 “Review.” Journal of Negro History 23:106–107.
Frow, John 1995 Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Oxford University Press.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 1984 “The blackness of blackness: A critique of the sign and the signifying monkey.” In Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), Black Literature and Literary Theory: 285–321. New York: Methuen.
1989 “Canon-formation, literary history, and the Afro-American tradition.” In Houston A. Baker, Jr. and Patricia Redmond (eds.), Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s: 14–38. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Griswold, Wendy 1981 “American character and the American novel: An expansion of reflection theory in the sociology of literature.” American Journal of Sociology 86:740–765.
1986 Renaissance Revivals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1987 “The fabrication of meaning: A third world writer's three worlds.” American Journal of Sociology 92:1077–1117.
1992 “The writing on the mud wall: Nigerian novels and the imaginary village.” American Sociological Review 57:709–724.
Harris, Robert 1984 “The Afro-American classics.” Black Enterprise 14:33–34, 36, 38.
Hemenway, Robert 1977 Zora Neale Hurston. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Hibben, Sheila 1937 “Vibrant book full of nature and salt.” New York Herald Tribune Books (September 26):2.
Holub, Robert C. 1984 Reception Theory. London: Routledge.
Howard, Lillie P. 1980 Zora Neale Hurston. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Hull Gloria T., Patricia Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith, eds. 1982 All the Women are White, All the Black Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press.
Hunton, W. A. 1938 “The adventures of a brown girl in her search for life.” Journal of Negro Education 7:71–72.
Huston, Zora Neale 1990 Their Eyes Were Watching God. (1937) New York: Harper & Row.
1979 I Love Myself When I Am Laughing...And Then Again When I am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press.
Johnson, Barbara 1984 “Metaphor, metonymy and voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” In Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (ed.), Black Literature and Literary Theory: 205–219. New York: Methuen.
Johnson, James Weldon, ed. 1922 The Book of American Negro Poetry, Chosen and Edited with an Essay on the Negro's Creative Genius. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Kolodny, Annette 1985 “A map for rereading: Gender and the interpretation of literary texts.” In Elaine Showalter (ed.), The New Feminist Criticism: 46–62. New York: Pantheon.
Lamont, Michèle 1995 “National identity and national boundary patterns in France and the United States.” French Historical Studies 19:349–365.
Lamont, Michèle and Marcel Fournier, eds. 1992 Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lang, Gladys Engel and Lang, Kurt 1988 “Recognition and renown: The survival of artistic reputation.” American Journal of Sociology 94:79–109.
Lauter, Paul 1991 Canons and Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Levine, Lawrence W. 1988 Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Long, Elizabeth 1987 “Reading groups and the postmodern crisis of cultural authority.” Cultural Studies 1:306–327.
McCredie, Wendy J. 1982 “Authority and authorization in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Black American Literature Forum 16: 25–28.
McDowell, Deborah E. 1980 “New directions for Black feminist criticism.” Black American Literature Forum 14:153–159.
1989 “Boundaries: Or distant relations and close kin.” In Houston A, Baker, Jr. and Patricia Redmond (eds.), Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s: 51–70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Milner, Murray Jr. 1994 Status and Sacredness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mukerji, Chandra 1990 “Reading and writing with nature: Social claims and French formal gardens.” Theory and Society 19:651–679.
1994 “Toward a sociology of material culture: Science studies, cultural studies and the meanings of things.” In Diana Crane (ed.), Sociology of Culture: 143–162. London: Basil Blackwell.
Mukerji, Chandra and Michael Schudson, eds. 1991 Rethinking Popular Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Newson, Adele S. 1987 Zora Neale Hurston: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.
Peterson, Richard A. 1972 “A process model of the folk, pop, and fine art phrases of jazz.” In Charles Nanry (ed.), American Music: 135–151. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
1994 “Culture studies through the production perspective: Progress and prospects.” In Diane Crane (ed.), Sociology of Culture: 163–190. London: Basil Blackwell.
Pondrom, Cyrena N. 1986 “The role of myth in Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God.” merican Literature 58:181–202.
Powell, Walter W. 1985 Getting Into Print. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Press, Andrea 1991 Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
1994 “The sociology of cultural reception: Notes toward an emerging paradigm.” In Diane Crane (ed.), Sociology of Culture: 221–146. London: Basil Blackwell.
Radway, Janice 1984 Reading the Romance. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Schudson, Michael 1989 “How culture works.” Theory and Society 18:153–180.
Sewell, William Jr. 1992 “A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98:1–29.
Shively, JoEllen 1992 “Perceptions of western films among American Indians and Anglos.” American Sociological Review 57:725–734.
Showalter, Elaine 1985 The New Feminist Criticism. New York: Pantheon.
Shrum, Wesley 1991 “Critics and publics: Cultural mediation in highbrow and popular performing arts.” American Journal of Sociology 97:347–375.
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein 1983 “The contingencies of value.” Critical Inquiry 10:1–35.
Spillers, Hortense J. 1989 “Response to McDowell.” In Houston Baker and Patricia Redmond (eds.), Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s: 71–72. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stevens, George 1937 “Negroes by themselves.” Saturday Review of Literature (September 26):3
Swidler, Ann 1986 “Culture in Action: Symbols and strategies.” American Sociological Review 51: 273–286.
Time 1937 “Negropings” (September 20):71.
Tompkins, Jane 1985 Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction 1790–1860. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tompkins, Lucy 1937 “In the Florida glades.” New York Times Book Review (September 26):29.
Walker, Alice 1975 “In search of Zora Neale Hurston.” Ms (March 3): 74–79, 85–89.
1979 “On refusing to be humbled by second place.” In Zora Neale Hurston, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing: 1–5. Edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press.
1983 In Search of Our Mother's Gardens. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Walker, S. Jay 1974 “Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God: Black novel of sexism.” Modern Fiction Studies 20:519–527.
Washington, Mary Helen 1979 “Introduction.” In Zora Neale Hurston, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing: 7–25. Edited by Alice Walker. Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press.
1990 “Foreword.” In Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God: vii-xiv. (1937) New York: Harper & Row.
Waters, Mary 1990 Ethnic Options. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wilkinson, Doris Y. 1974 “Racial socialization through children's toys.” Journal of Black Studies 5:96–109.
Wolf, Maria Tai 1982 “Listening and living.” Black American Literature Forum 16:29–33.
Wolff, Janet 1992 “Excess and inhibition: Interdisciplinarity in the study of art.” In Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler (eds.), Cultural Studies: 706–717. New York: Routledge.
Wright, Richard 1937 “Between laughter and tears.” New Masses (October 5):22, 25.
Yarborough, Richard 1989 “The first-person in Afro-American fiction.” In Houston A. Baker, Jr. and Patricia Redmond (eds.), Afro-American Literary Study in the 1990s: 105–120. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zolberg, Vera 1990 Constructing a Sociology of the Arts. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Corse, S.M., Griffin, M.D. Cultural Valorization and African American Literary History: Reconstructing the Canon. Sociological Forum 12, 173–203 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024645715453
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024645715453