The black literary canon was and always will be a point of great contention among scholars and writers alike because it is viewed as a right of passage to the road that not only defines the literary product of an era but also brackets the consciousness of a group by whom and about whom literature is written. Focusing on their points of agreement helps serve the purpose of this research to advance a progressive vision of a black aesthetic.
Baker, the great tycoons of black literary criticism, in order to situate Dove vis a vis the representation of blackness and the racialization/ or deracialization of art. Before further elaboration on the volume and on Dove's black aesthetic in particular, I would like to reflect on the nature of Black discourse from the perspectives of Henry Louis Gates and Houston A.
Aptly titled, Sonata Mulattica toys with musical motifs of motion and stasis that condition a return to a historical sweep of incidents that were willfully approximated if not eradicated from the history of world music. Having a purposeful design, the volume breaks fresh ground in the representation of blackness as it engages the reference with the historical. Dove anchors the volume in artistry that lends itself to epiphanic moments that help one come to terms with personal tragedy. So tightly woven, Sonata Mulattica features enormous lexical range and orchestral potential that verge on the reaches of poetic and narrative prophecy. The volume sublimates race to a level of refinement that does modern blackness proud. It is the project of this paper to reflect on blackness depicted in Rita Dove's Sonata Mulattica, a breakthrough volume that figures a reimaging of a black aesthetic that is universalized through the music of transcendence presenting an " Ars Poetica, " an " X marks the spot, " leading to Dove's signature crossing. Baker's commentary on the broad range and richness of black representation in her work: " If black is the combined richness of all color, then Rita Dove is the singing blackness of blackness " (1990, 577). Dove's sense of integrationism invited Houston A. To Rita Dove, a renowned poet of great transformations and eclectic artistry, blackness is an aesthetic that needs to be embraced and celebrated.
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