Stručni rad
The Depiction of African-American Life during the Harlem Renaissance in Jean Toomer's Cane
Martina Jović
; Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
This paper aims to discuss the problems that African Americans
faced at the beginning of the twentieth century, notably discrimination and marginalization, and to explore the social movements which emerged at the time. The New Negro, a movement founded by Alain Locke, intended to achieve the inclusion of African Americans in U.S. society through art. In Harlem, New York, the Negro Renaissance began. The African-American modernist stream will be explored through the analysis of Jean Toomer’s depiction of African-American life in the novel Cane. The novel is experimental, as Toomer combines poetry, prose, and drama, writes in a rural dialect, and incorporates poems and stream of consciousness into short stories. Cane has a tripartite structure – the first section is set in the American South, the second in the industrial North, and the final section again in the American South – in Georgia. The sections are tied together through folk motifs and the themes of oppression, alienation, and aimlessness. The novel is motivated by the author’s racial ambiguity and his position as a mediator between “white” and “black” culture. In opposition to other modernist literature, Toomer focuses on the rural South in order to illustrate the folk culture still present there. Juxtaposing the North and the South, the author addresses the problems of African Americans while providing social critique.
Ključne riječi
the Harlem Renaissance; the New Negro movement; racial ambivalence; oppression; alienation
Hrčak ID:
244489
URI
Datum izdavanja:
4.4.2020.
Posjeta: 1.009 *