Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of
literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary--each book includes
educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers
alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer
and their work.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered
Du Bois's impassioned yet formal prose, the largely autobiographical
chapters of The Souls of Black Folks take the reader through the
momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation
Proclamation: from poverty, the neo-slavery of the sharecropper,
illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity
reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel music and
the blues. The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk is Du Bois's
haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's
"double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar
sensation...One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in
one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn
asunder."
Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining
the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author's
personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent
scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify
and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further
research.
Read with confidence.
