The son of a preacher man : race, sexuality and religion in the work of James Baldwin

This thesis explores the three most persistent and interconnected themes in the work of James Baldwin: race, sexuality, and religion. Central to my thesis is an examination of the ways in which Baldwin's work has troubled readers and critics alike in his refusal both to adhere to a single coherent ideology, and to be labelled or categorised, which I argue has problematised his place in both the American and African-American canons. This thesis argues for the importance of placing Baldwin in the political and historical climates that his four decades of writing came out of. By examining the ways in which he responded to and wrote from a variegated climate of Protest fiction, Integration and Assimilation, Civil Rights, pre and post-Stonewall, and the emergence of gay studies, this thesis argues that Baldwin presciently foregrounds many of cultural theory's largest debates. Baldwin's work repeatedly questions not only the boundaries of black literature, but how blackness itself might be constituted. How is the canon formed? What, Baldwin's work demands, is whiteness? What is homosexuality and homosexual literature?