Images Of Blackness In The Poetry Of Langston Hughes And LeRoi Iones : An Analytical Study Of Their Poetry
Adel Mohammed Afifi;
Abstract
It is as though one, looking out from a dark cave in a side of an impending mountain, sees the world passing and speaks to it; speaks courteously and persuasively, showing them how these entombed souls are kindred in their natural movement, expression, and development; and how their loosening from prison would be a matter not simply of courtesy, sympathy, to help them:but aid to all the world. One talks on evenly and logically in this way, but notices that the passing throng does not even turn its head, or if it does, glances curiously and walks on. It gradually penetrates the minds of the prisoners that the people passing do not hear; that some thick sheet of invisible but horribly tangible plate glass is between them and the world.1
The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.2
The objective of this introductory chapter is to compare and contrast the attitudes of Langston Hughes(1902- 1967) and LeRoi Jones( later Amiri Baraka)( 1934- ) towards blackness and its images as presented in a considerable portion of their poetry. Understandably, an examination of the relationship of the two poets provides a capsule opposition of two Afro-American theories of art and reveals implicit and explicit layers of the relationship between the poetry of black experience flourishing during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the poetry of the Black Aesthetic Movement of the 1960s Black Renaissance.
The comparison and contrast of the literary attitudes of the two poets reveal the
continuities and developments of Afro-American responses to an age-old misrepresentation and stereotyping of blackness in Western culture and literature. They have to do with the inner world of blackness as seen and felt by blacks themselves. However, the tendency of the two poets to recreate black images by means of self-evaluation is governed by their concepts of identity, the cultural influences upon each of them, and the cultural and socio-political conditions of their times. This chapter is intended, therefore, to pinpoint the background against which black writers in general and Afro-American writers in particular have to create their own images.
It is important to caution that writings about blackness with different attitudes in
Western literature and pro-colonial studies are too numerous to be handled in such a narrow
The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.2
The objective of this introductory chapter is to compare and contrast the attitudes of Langston Hughes(1902- 1967) and LeRoi Jones( later Amiri Baraka)( 1934- ) towards blackness and its images as presented in a considerable portion of their poetry. Understandably, an examination of the relationship of the two poets provides a capsule opposition of two Afro-American theories of art and reveals implicit and explicit layers of the relationship between the poetry of black experience flourishing during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the poetry of the Black Aesthetic Movement of the 1960s Black Renaissance.
The comparison and contrast of the literary attitudes of the two poets reveal the
continuities and developments of Afro-American responses to an age-old misrepresentation and stereotyping of blackness in Western culture and literature. They have to do with the inner world of blackness as seen and felt by blacks themselves. However, the tendency of the two poets to recreate black images by means of self-evaluation is governed by their concepts of identity, the cultural influences upon each of them, and the cultural and socio-political conditions of their times. This chapter is intended, therefore, to pinpoint the background against which black writers in general and Afro-American writers in particular have to create their own images.
It is important to caution that writings about blackness with different attitudes in
Western literature and pro-colonial studies are too numerous to be handled in such a narrow
Other data
| Title | Images Of Blackness In The Poetry Of Langston Hughes And LeRoi Iones : An Analytical Study Of Their Poetry | Other Titles | لا يوجد | Authors | Adel Mohammed Afifi | Issue Date | 2000 |
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