ENG 3378 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Readwrite, Emily Dickinson, Jim Crow Laws
13 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
ENG3378- Lecture 5- May 16, 2018
Tooe’s litea ifluees (Cane)
• Guiding themes & ideals of the Harlem Renaissance
B
Bringing black heroes and heroics into focus
E
Evoking deeper self understanding of black identity
A
Advocating Africa as a source of race pride
U
Unapologetically expressing of black expression
T
Treating art as propaganda of protest
Y
Yearning to describe the beauty of blackness
• While Toomer can be given credit for starting this Hale eaissae hoee he as’t the
only one
• A book like Cane forces the entire population- both white and black to re think about what it
means to have black experience in America
• Toomer lived most of his life in a white society- it as’t util aout a couple years before
writing Cane did he end up teaching in a predominantly black school- giving him an insight he
did’t hae pio
• Importance of the genetic differences- one of the things we will examine shortly in this novel
• Movement between traditional writing and experimental writing- not easy to determine either
as both aspects of writing appear in both parts of the book- jumbled together
• Because Toomer was able to move between back and forth as well as be neither black nor white
gave him an advantage in comparison to other renaissance writers
• Slavery/ black experience has been a part of Americas history before there was even an
America- so why did it take 200 years for it to make an appearance in literature? **
• The name itself is a misconception because it is not a renaissance- it is not a rebirth- it is a birth
• It is not a restaging of black art but the birth of it coming forward
• Using Harlem only as well is too small- does’t eopass eough of the aea- while many did
develop their art there it as’t elusie to thee
• For whatever Harlem happens to be the one that stuck- probably since New York was so large
and many people tended to gravitate towards it
• 1865- celebrate and be embarrassed- end of the civil war- abolishment of slavery- the ideal that
America was founded upon actually begun to be right – this is not the blossoming of the
American dream- it actually broke even more following the war then the 4 years of the war
• Everyone believed that once the war was over America would be healed- however with the
death of Lincoln right after shadowed the further death to come
• If we are going to heal we need to welcome the south back as old family then as enemies
• However, with the death of Lincoln these thoughts dies with
• Much of the war was fought on south soil so after the war the south was devasted due to their
agriculture
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