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David Levering Lewis: 2009 <br><em>W.E.B. Du Bois as a Historical Novelist</em>

David Levering Lewis's two-volume biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, each of which won the Pulitzer Prize, is the definitive work on the life and thought of a complex American intellectual. In this lecture from the 2009 Key West Literary Seminar, Lewis examines Du Bois's largely-forgotten work as a writer of historical fiction, whose journey &quot;beyond the borders of social science cerititude&quot; was the result of a &quot;poetic temperament combined with an intellectual's dissatisfaction about the limits of the historically knowable.&quot; Lewis discusses Du Bois's early historical novels, <em>The Quest of the Silver Fleece </em> and <em> Dark Princess</em>; as well as the later Black Flame Trilogy (<em>The Ordeal of Mansart, Mansart Builds a School, </em>and <em>Worlds of Color</em>). In a brief question and answer session, Lewis comments on Du Bois's persecution at the hands of the U.S. government during the 1950s, his reputation as a &quot;ladies' man,&quot; and his early life and education in Great Barrington, MA.<br />

Posted by Arlo Haskell on April 1, 2009 4:16 PM