The Quest of the Silver Fleece
by W. E. B. Du Bois
A controversial title of its time, the novel chronicles the complex interactions between Northern finance and Southern politics as it follows the soulless Dawn, the child of the southern swamp, and his romance with the educated Yankee Blaz, who will eventually face the possibility of claiming political power through corrupt means. In the midst of all this is a silver fleece, a cotton crop rich in meaning and symbolism. In the tradition of other inflammatory novels exploring market forces at the turn of the century, such as Frank Norris' The Pit and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, The Quest for the Silver Fleece was seen by Du Bois as "economic research," but it was also a romantic and other verbal epic loosely based on the Greek legend from which it got its name. Using literary conventions to uncover and counter America's views on race, Du Bois presents an expanding and provocative work that continues to engage readers and inspire debate among literary scholars today.
