Title: Blacks, Jews, City People: Racial Issues in Saul Bellow’s Mid- and Late Urban Fictions

Abstract: Saul Bellow renovated the Black image in the urban fictions of his mid- and late writing career. Discussion of racial issues is offered unsparingly in his novels such as Mr. Sammler’s Planet, The Dean’s December, More Die of Heartbreak and Ravelstein. With repeated affirmation of his Jewish identity in his later career, he meditated on racial issues within a larger American context, providing a new perspective for probing into historical and racial issues. An exploration of Bellow’s racial attitude from an urban sociological perspective will be carried out so as to understand the covert Jewish culture behind his fiction.

Keywords: Saul Bellow, race, Blacks, Jews, urban fictions

Author: Tian Zhang, School of Foreign Languages, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, Hubei, China.