The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes

The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Antje Wulff
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640293355
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 22

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, course: The Poetry and Poetics of Langston Hughes, language: English, abstract: Langston Hughes was an urban person. Originally, he came from the rather rural Midwest of the United States, but he adopted the city as his real home very early in life and remained true to it ever since. In doing so, he acted very much in accordance with the zeitgeist of his period, which was hugely influenced by the sweeping processes of urbanisation started off earlier by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. Living in a big city represented a completely new experience in American, and indeed human, history. None of the traditional patterns of life could be applied to it without change. Notably, it has been impossible up to now to find a valid and comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of the modern city, which says a lot about the complexity of the issue. The following essay aims to analyse the way Hughes interpreted the urban phenomenon, for his affinity to the city clearly found expression in his poetry. Although he visited countless cities both at home and abroad, the overwhelming majority of his urban poems deals with life in the Manhattan district of Harlem, which assumed a key role for African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century and can also be regarded as the centre of Hughes’ own life. Viewing Harlem as a microcosm of black urban life and using it as a blueprint in his poetic work, he managed to draw a diverse and multi-layered image of existence in the city. Since, naturally, racial aspects are of particular significance in this context, the following analysis will try to examine the various roles played by urban life for African Americans. Thus, the essay will focus first on the hopes and expectations they associated with the city as a new environment. It will then examine whether and in what way those hopes were actually reflected in the general attitude towards urban life and in its various forms of expression, and whether there might have been less positive feelings as well. If so, it will then be necessary to deal with the problems and difficulties encountered by blacks in the city as they are presented in Hughes’ poetry. Here, both spiritual and material (that is, economic) concerns must be considered. Finally, since Hughes did not solely concentrate on the racial aspects of urbanity, the wider and more general human implications of modern urban existence laid out in his poems will be looked at to complete the analysis.

The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes

The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Antje Wulff
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640293355
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 22

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, course: The Poetry and Poetics of Langston Hughes, language: English, abstract: Langston Hughes was an urban person. Originally, he came from the rather rural Midwest of the United States, but he adopted the city as his real home very early in life and remained true to it ever since. In doing so, he acted very much in accordance with the zeitgeist of his period, which was hugely influenced by the sweeping processes of urbanisation started off earlier by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. Living in a big city represented a completely new experience in American, and indeed human, history. None of the traditional patterns of life could be applied to it without change. Notably, it has been impossible up to now to find a valid and comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of the modern city, which says a lot about the complexity of the issue. The following essay aims to analyse the way Hughes interpreted the urban phenomenon, for his affinity to the city clearly found expression in his poetry. Although he visited countless cities both at home and abroad, the overwhelming majority of his urban poems deals with life in the Manhattan district of Harlem, which assumed a key role for African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century and can also be regarded as the centre of Hughes’ own life. Viewing Harlem as a microcosm of black urban life and using it as a blueprint in his poetic work, he managed to draw a diverse and multi-layered image of existence in the city. Since, naturally, racial aspects are of particular significance in this context, the following analysis will try to examine the various roles played by urban life for African Americans. Thus, the essay will focus first on the hopes and expectations they associated with the city as a new environment. It will then examine whether and in what way those hopes were actually reflected in the general attitude towards urban life and in its various forms of expression, and whether there might have been less positive feelings as well. If so, it will then be necessary to deal with the problems and difficulties encountered by blacks in the city as they are presented in Hughes’ poetry. Here, both spiritual and material (that is, economic) concerns must be considered. Finally, since Hughes did not solely concentrate on the racial aspects of urbanity, the wider and more general human implications of modern urban existence laid out in his poems will be looked at to complete the analysis.

The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes

The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Antje Wulff
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640293614
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 29

Get Book Here

Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Trier, course: The Poetry and Poetics of Langston Hughes, 13 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Langston Hughes was an urban person. Originally, he came from the rather rural Midwest of the United States, but he adopted the city as his real home very early in life and remained true to it ever since. In doing so, he acted very much in accordance with the zeitgeist of his period, which was hugely influenced by the sweeping processes of urbanisation started off earlier by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. Living in a big city represented a completely new experience in American, and indeed human, history. None of the traditional patterns of life could be applied to it without change. Notably, it has been impossible up to now to find a valid and comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of the modern city, which says a lot about the complexity of the issue. The following essay aims to analyse the way Hughes interpreted the urban phenomenon, for his affinity to the city clearly found expression in his poetry. Although he visited countless cities both at home and abroad, the overwhelming majority of his urban poems deals with life in the Manhattan district of Harlem, which assumed a key role for African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century and can also be regarded as the centre of Hughes' own life. Viewing Harlem as a microcosm of black urban life and using it as a blueprint in his poetic work, he managed to draw a diverse and multi-layered image of existence in the city. Since, naturally, racial aspects are of particular significance in this context, the following analysis will try to examine the various roles played by urban life for African Americans. Thus, the essay will focus first on the hopes and expectations they associated with the city as a new environment. It will then examine whether and in what way

Race in The Poetry of Langston Hughes

Race in The Poetry of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Claudia Durst Johnson
Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC
ISBN: 0737770635
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Get Book Here

Book Description
This informative edition explores the poetry of Langston Hughes through the lens of race. Coverage includes an examination of Hughes's life and influences; a look at key ideas related to race in Hughes's poetry, including the influence of African-American music, the use of poetry to address racial problems, and the politics of Hughes's anti-lynching poems; and contemporary perspectives on race, such as the decline of civil rights reform and the role of hip-hop in shaping black music.

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Selected Poems of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307949400
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book Here

Book Description
Langston Hughes electrified readers and launched a renaissance in Black writing in America—the poems in this collection were chosen by Hughes himself shortly before his death and represent stunning work from his entire career. The poems Hughes wrote celebrated the experience of invisible men and women: of slaves who "rushed the boots of Washington"; of musicians on Lenox Avenue; of the poor and the lovesick; of losers in "the raffle of night." They conveyed that experience in a voice that blended the spoken with the sung, that turned poetic lines into the phrases of jazz and blues, and that ripped through the curtain separating high from popular culture. They spanned the range from the lyric to the polemic, ringing out "wonder and pain and terror—and the marrow of the bone of life." The collection includes "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," "The Weary Blues," "Still Here," "Song for a Dark Girl," "Montage of a Dream Deferred," and "Refugee in America." It gives us a poet of extraordinary range, directness, and stylistic virtuosity.

The Weary Blues

The Weary Blues PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504073738
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 91

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first published poetry collection from the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance poet behind such works as “Montage of a Dream Deferred” and “Life is Fine.” Originally published in 1926, The Weary Blues is Langston Hughes’s first collection of poetry. Broken into seven thematic sections, the sixty-eight poems capture the heart of a young budding artist and the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance. The title poem, “The Weary Blues,” tells the story of a musician performing in a bar and uses a very lyrical style that flows throughout the collection. Other poems include, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” “Danse Africaine,” “Dream Variation,” “Mother to Son,” “Suicide’s Note,” and “Winter Moon.” The work touches on subjects like art, identity, race, class, urban life, music, and the Black experience in 1920s America.

Let America Be America Again

Let America Be America Again PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192855042
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 362

Get Book Here

Book Description
A collection of interviews, speeches, and essays by Langston Hughes. Let America Be America Again: Conversations with Langston Hughes is a record of a remarkable man talking. In texts ranging from early interviews in the 1920s, when he was a busboy and scribbling out poems on hotel napkins, to major speeches, such as his keynote address at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966, Hughes's words further amplify the international reputation he established over the course of five decades through more widely-published and well-known poems, stories, novels, and plays. In these interviews, speeches, and conversational essays, the writer referred to by admirers as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race" and the "Dean of Black Letters" articulated some of his most powerful critiques of fascism, economic and racial oppression, and compromised democracy. It was also through these genres that Hughes spoke of the responsibilities of the Black artist, documented the essential contributions of Black people to literature, music, and theatre, and chronicled the substantial challenges that Black artists face in gaining recognition, fair pay, and professional advancement. And it was through these pieces, too, that Hughes built on his celebrated work in other literary genres to craft an original, tragic-comic persona--a Blues poet in exile, forever yearning for and coming back to a home, a nation, that nevertheless continues to disappoint and harm him. A global traveler, Hughes's words, "Let America be America Again" were, throughout his career, always followed by a caveat: "America never was America to me."

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes PDF Author: Jodie A. Shull
Publisher: Enslow Publishing
ISBN: 9780766024687
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The poetry of Langston Hughes pulses with the rhythms of jazz and blues, and the language of the streets. In describing the everyday lives of African Americans, he became the leading African-American poet of the world. Jodie A. Shull's insightful and highly readable new biography sheds light on one of the most important figures of the Harlem Renaissance and introduces another generation to his extraordinary outpouring of poetry, short stories, novels, plays, and other work.

The Worlds of Langston Hughes

The Worlds of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Vera M. Kutzinski
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801466245
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 375

Get Book Here

Book Description
The poet Langston Hughes was a tireless world traveler and a prolific translator, editor, and marketer. Translations of his own writings traveled even more widely than he did, earning him adulation throughout Europe, Asia, and especially the Americas. In The Worlds of Langston Hughes, Vera Kutzinski contends that, for writers who are part of the African diaspora, translation is more than just a literary practice: it is a fact of life and a way of thinking. Focusing on Hughes's autobiographies, translations of his poetry, his own translations, and the political lyrics that brought him to the attention of the infamous McCarthy Committee, she shows that translating and being translated—and often mistranslated—are as vital to Hughes's own poetics as they are to understanding the historical network of cultural relations known as literary modernism.As Kutzinski maps the trajectory of Hughes's writings across Europe and the Americas, we see the remarkable extent to which the translations of his poetry were in conversation with the work of other modernist writers. Kutzinski spotlights cities whose role as meeting places for modernists from all over the world has yet to be fully explored: Madrid, Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, and of course Harlem. The result is a fresh look at Hughes, not as a solitary author who wrote in a single language, but as an international figure at the heart of a global intellectual and artistic formation.

Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781402718458
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60

Get Book Here

Book Description
A brief profile of African American poet Langston Hughes accompanies some of his better known poems for children.

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679764089
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 731

Get Book Here

Book Description
The definitive sampling of a writer whose poems were “at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance and of modernism itself, and today are fundamentals of American culture” (OPRAH Magazine). Here, for the first time, are all the poems that Langston Hughes published during his lifetime, arranged in the general order in which he wrote them. Lyrical and pungent, passionate and polemical, the result is a treasure of a book, the essential collection of a poet whose words have entered our common language. The collection spans five decades, and is comprised of 868 poems (nearly 300 of which never before appeared in book form) with annotations by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel. Alongside such famous works as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and Montage of a Dream Deferred, The Collected Poems includes Hughes's lesser-known verse for children; topical poems distributed through the Associated Negro Press; and poems such as "Goodbye Christ" that were once suppressed.