"Stand Still and See the Salvation"

Abstract

If artistic standards were the sole criteria for evaluating the importance of black literature of the nineteenth century, much of what is otherwise informative, frequently interesting and entertaining, and certainly of cultural significance would be excluded from American intellectual history (Bone, 1958: 228). Martin Delany's novel Blake, an important social document, would remain obscure or, worse still, fall prey to unmerciful attacks by literary critics eager to condemn its obvious stylistic and structural flaws. Those less interested in judging the artistic and aesthetic merits of a work, and more intent upon understanding the design of art as social protest, ought to find Blake well-deserving of high status, at least in the ante-bellum tradition. A rhetorical tradition ought to encompass literature viewed as argument and judged in terms of how the artist supports claims through the medium of his art. It should foster examination of literature as a response to social conditions, rather than as merely a mirror of literary canons.