American
Romanticism
Student-led Text-Objective Discussion 2008
Thursday 20 November: Harlem Renaissance: Claude McKay, N 2-2086. Zora Neal Hurston, N 2157-61. Jean Toomer, N 2179-84. Langston Hughes N 2263-68. Countee Cullen, N 2283-87 + "From the Dark Tower" & "For a Poet" (web posts)
text-objective discussion leader (Harlem Renaissance): Ayme Christian
Claude McKay
1889-1948 (59 years)
*Born in Jamaica in 1889, emigrated to U. S. in 1912
*Became an American citizen in 1940
* Harlem Shadows, his 1922 book of poetry is considered to be the book that initiated the Harlem Renaissance
*Home to Harlem (1928) was the only best-selling African-American novel of the decade
* His poetry, much of it written in strict sonnet form, incorporated racial subjects and radical politics
*Believed that racism was inseparable from capitalism, which he saw as a structure designed to perpetuate economic inequality
*Chose to write mainly about the working class rather than the middle class
*After visiting Moscow in 1923, wasn’t allowed to return to U. S. until 1934
*Eventually renounced his Communist sympathies due to actions of Stalin
Objectives Covered:
Objective 1: Literary Categories of Romanticism
1b. The Romantic Period
- To speculate on residual elements in “post-Romantic” writings from later periods including “Realism and Local Color,” “Modernism,” and “Postmodernism.”
Objective 2 : Cultural Issues
2d Economically liberal but culturally conservative, the USA creates “Old and New Canons” also in terms of gender
*masculine traditions: freedom and the frontier (with variations)
*feminine traditions: relations and domesticity (with variations)
Questions:
- How do the following poems remind you of earlier Romantic elements defined in the course objectives? Anything gothic? Sublime? Journey? Separateness/Isolation?
- Why do you think McKay uses the word “sacred” in Harlem Shadows (last stanza)?
- In her narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs states:
When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own (816).
The following poems are written during the Harlem Renaissance, almost one hundred years after this quote. Based on these poems, do you see any similarities in the plights of women?
The Harlem Dancer
Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes
And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway;
Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes
Blown by black players upon a picnic day.
She sang and danced on gracefully and calm,
The light gauze hanging loose about her form;
To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm
Grown lovelier for passing through a storm.
Upon her swarthy neck black shiny curls
Luxuriant fell; and tossing coins in praise,
The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls,
Devoured her shape with eager, passionate gaze;
But looking at her falsely-smiling face,
I knew her self was not in that strange place.
Harlem Shadows
I hear the haltin footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire’s call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!
Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth’s white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.
Ah, stern harsh world, that in the wretched way
Of poverty, dishonor and disgrace,
Has pushed the timid little feet of clay,
The sacred brown feet of my fallen race!
Ah, heart of me, the weary, weary feet
In Harlem wandering from street to street.
Langston Hughes
1902-1967 (65 years)
*Born in Joplin, Missouri, lived mainly with his maternal grandmother in Kansas after his parents divorced
*Called "Bard of Harlem" by the 1930's
*Particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties.
*Prolific writer: novels, short stories, plays, journalism as well as poetry
* He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself.
Questions for Hughes's poems:
- Compare/contrast the language used in the following poem by Hughes with those above by McKay. Which do you think is more effective, the elevated language of the sonnet form? Or the vernacular that Hughes uses?
- Which residual elements from Romanticism do you detect in this poem and how does it (do they) affect the mood of the poem?
Mother to Son (Norton, p. 2265)
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor –
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now –
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Sources:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/mckay/harlemdancer.htm
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html