The classic badman and the ballad
Postbellum violence and its causes : "displaced rage" in a preindustrial culture
Between the wars : the genteel novel, counterstereotypes, and initial probes
From the genteel to the primitive : the twenties and thirties
The ghetto bildungsroman : from the forties to the seventies
Toasts : tales of the "bad nigger"
Chester Himes : Harlem absurd
A "toast" novel : pimps, hoodlums, and hit men
Walter Mosley and the violent men of Watts
Rap : going commercial
The badman and the storyteller : John Edgar Wideman's homewood trilogy
Toni Morrison : Ulysses, badmen, and archetypes
abandoning violence
Appendix : Analysis of thirty prototype ballads.