William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, The Quest of the Silver Fleece

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Already well known for

The Souls of Black Folk

and other works, W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) published

The Quest of the Silver Fleece

in 1911. It was his first novel and became another of the various ways by which he challenged racial discrimination and social injustice over the span of his long career. Du Bois considered

Quest

to represent “The Future of the Negro” – the bibliographic heading under which he classified the novel in his book

The Negro

(1915). In 1940, Du Bois wrote that

Quest

“was really an economic study of some merit” (

Dusk of Dawn

).

Commentators, both contemporary and later, have noted that Quest is part of a tradition of books that frame everyday human existence in terms of struggles over the production of goods (Braithwaite; Lewis): for example, Frank Norris's

1660 words

Citation: Williams, Robert W.. "The Quest of the Silver Fleece". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 December 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=28514, accessed 06 October 2024.]

28514 The Quest of the Silver Fleece 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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