This study seeks to establish jazz as a dominant narrative tendency of nineteenth-century romantic and twentieth-century modernist texts. To this end, the following study responds to the following questions: What is jazz, and how can we read it into literature? Deeply tied to the African-American oral tradition, jazz is a moment of witnessing or testifying. This moment may be read as a spiritual epiphany or, for the more secular minded, an existential insight into the nature of being. Both readings are connected by the sense that the individual needs to know his or her place in the world. This longing, I contend, comes across in the music form called jazz.
This study takes to heart Ellison's belief that America is a "jazz-shaped" nation. To bring this idea to light, this dissertation traces the contours of this idea, working counter-intuitively by arguing that a jazz cadence existed in American life and literature before the invention of the music during the early twentieth century.
To develop the idea of a jazz cadence or matrix, this study breaks down jazz into the following areas of critical departure: outcasts, migration, and spirituality.
