The purpose of this study was to analyze for oral presentation a selected body of poetry by Langston Hughes. Because Hughes read his own poetry in lecture recitals throughout his career, which spanned more than four decades, it is appropriate that he be considered for such a study.

Now, it is the purpose of this dissertation to present a study of the imagery in the poetry of Langston Hughes with special emphasis upon (1) its sources, (2) its types, (3) its functions, and, (4) its imprtance as a factor in evaluating Hughes' poetic contributions to society.

This study responds to the need for an understanding of the relation of form and political critique within the sonnet form, and hopes to demonstrate that the sonnet can be used to effectively articulate the experience of racism, especially the Du Boisian concept of "double- consciousness," a sense of two-ness born of being both black and American. The fundamental structure of the sonnet (octave, volta, sestet) is dialectical; it "contests the idea it just introduced" (Caplan, Poetic Form: An Introduction 75). The sonnet's self-reflexive structure has been adopted and adapted by poets such as McKay, Cullen, Hughes, and Brooks. The formal and social characteristics of sonnets by African-Americans function synergistically: the way that the octave and the sestet respond to each other in a single poem is also similar to the "call-and- response" movement of African American oral culture. Its tendency to mix two unlike things is like Harlem itself: a compressed space where the street sweeper rubs shoulders with the business tycoon. Perhaps most importantly, the sonnet can be a Trojan horse, a genteel container that conceals a potentially subversive message. This study is constructed around related lines of questioning: First, why did African American poets, in an era usually associated with free verse, choose to adopt a traditional form? Second, how do African American poets adapt a European form as a lens into African American experience? Sonnets by African Americans reflect the complexity of a seemingly simple triangulation between the traditional requirements of form, the promise of equality, and the reality of racism. African American poets infuse "Harlem in Shakespeare," pouring black consciousness into the European form, and they raise "Shakespeare in Harlem," elevating the status of African American forms to the highest levels of literary art. At the same time, this study demonstrates the value of a prosody-based approach for examining how small formal details contribute substantially to the reader's impression of the sonnet. These poets deploy the "rules" of the sonnet ingeniously and unexpectedly. Additionally, the sonnet is a way to separate from and simultaneously be a part of the dominant culture by writing a critical message in a recognizable form. Black culture can criticize white culture, while at the same time acknowledging the mutual, inescapable relationship that binds blacks and white Americans together. Additionally, the sonnet is a way to separate from and simultaneously be a part of the dominant culture by writing a critical message in a recognizable form. Black culture can criticize white culture, while at the same time acknowledging the mutual, inescapable relationship that binds blacks and white Americans together.

As Paul Gilroy has argued, the Black Atlantic is a cultural and literary network that has emerged in the aftermath of the Atlantic slave trade. The concerns of the Black Atlantic are made visible in the poetry of African American Langston Hughes and Cuban Nicolás Guillén. Gilroy’s theorization of the Black Atlantic draws on W.E.B. Du Bois’s idea of ‘double consciousness’ which describes the “doubleness” that blacks can experience when belonging to two groups at the same time which have been constructed as oppositional and exclusive in a society. One of Du Bois’s main concerns is to highlight the troublesome situation of the African Americans in the time after the emancipation, and to advocate for the inclusion of black people’s culture and identity into the U.S. national identity. Gilroy develops the idea of double consciousness to question national identities, notions of ethnicity, and the assumption that cultures always flow into congruent patterns with national borders; he further suggests that the Atlantic should be taken as a single, complex formation of black cultural expression. The analysis in this essay of the poems by Hughes and Guillén show that even though the poetry of these writers emerges in different contexts their poetry share essential similarities in their expressions of the Black Atlantic: the expression of a collective subject’s experience of slavery and displacement, the experience of double consciousness, and the aspiration for a whole identity, which can either, or simultaneously, be a desire of belonging to a national identity or to a cosmopolitan identity. Furthermore the analysis displays that the poems express a belonging to a certain kind of ‘rootless cosmopolitanism’ in which the subject’s experience of not belonging and the unification in the dispersion is fundamental; this rootless world identity is in itself a manifestation of the Black Atlantic culture which Gilroy describes.

This dissertation explores the effects disability had on the aesthetics of American modernist writers like Langston Hughes, William Faulkner, Amy Lowell, and Ezra Pound at a time when eugenics' insistence on a superior and uniform humanity dominated social thought and how their writings complicate generalized conclusions espousing ablist tendencies in modernist literature, demonstrating that such generalizations can be complicated with careful attention to a broad range of modernist texts. The introduction highlights important ideas and events in the development of disability studies and applies the theory to Emily Dickinson’s “Safe in their Alabaster Chambers” to demonstrate how scholars have largely overlooked even well-known authors’ engagement with disability. The first chapter interrogates Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury to demonstrate that, rather than reify disability, Faulkner questions the idea of norms that imply a stable identity by alluding to and investigating ideas relevant to important events and conceptions of the time such as Henry H. Goddard’s The Kallikak Family and the U.S. Supreme court case of Buck v. Bell. Chapter two’s analysis of Langston Hughes's Fine Clothes to the Jew identifies a tendency in the poetry to enact Tobin Sieber’s concept of disability masquerade to assume but play against the intellectually disabled identity forced on Blacks at the time, rather than attempting to distance himself from the label as disability theorists such as Douglas Baynton posit generally occurs when racialized groups are associated with disability. In the third chapter, Robert McRuer’s concept of compulsory able-bodiedness is identified as a source for Amy Lowell’s fall from popularity and she is considered alongside conceptions of the freak to identify a source for her creativity most evident in the "polyphonic prose" of Can Grande's Castle, her invention to free poets of the restrictions of traditional cadenced verse. The final chapter offers a reading of Pound's Drafts & Fragments that, while highlighting this often neglected collection's importance because of the social awareness brought to it through Pound's twelve and a half years in a mental institution, also explores the limitations of readings that assume that his disabled status guided this poetry. Concluding the dissertation is an analysis of Sherman Alexie's Pulitzer prize winning young adult novel, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, that demonstrates disability’s continued applicability after eugenics’ fall from grace and highlights Alexie’s use of humor to get readers to stare as a part of considering the serious topics he writes into the novel, instigating what Rosemarie Garland-Thomson calls the "good stare" that welcomes identification between staree and starer. Together, these chapters attempt to further expand the inclusivity of discussions of modernism and complicate long-standing understandings of disability.

No description available.

Se a tradução envolve leitura e reescrita, nós poderíamos questionar o modo como se lê antes de questionar o modo como se reescreve. A tradução de poesia parece continuamente lidar com problemas de ritmo, rima, sintaxe, sentido, registro linguístico. Mas e se o tradutor, entendendo a leitura como performance, recolocar tais questões sob a perspectiva de outra mídia, que possa libertá-lo das restrições da escrita? O pesquisador Peter Low (2003) provoca os tradutores de poesia a se questionarem se desejam que seus textos sejam vocalizados (recitados, musicados etc.), e não apenas lidos silenciosamente. Haveria, então, uma alteração funcional e, consequentemente, um texto de chegada com um skopos diferente (REISS e VERMEER, 1996). Trata-se de trabalhar com a força latente da voz no texto; com uma possibilidade de performance inscrita na mídia escrita: a vocalidade, como coloca Paul Zumthor (1993). O poeta negro estadunidense Langston Hughes (1902-67) escrevia poemas semelhantes a letras de blues e recitava seus versos no ato da criação, o que pode sugerir algo a respeito de um possível modo de ler, absorver e recriar sua poesia em outra língua. Nosso objetivo, portanto, é traduzir seus poemas de blues ao cantá-los e tocá-los no violão. As canções de blues resultantes, em português, estão registradas em CD que foi inserido como apêndice da tese. Nosso método consiste em musicá-los enquanto os traduzimos, pois a simultaneidade dos processos é precisamente aquilo que interfere nas escolhas linguísticas, influenciando aspectos de ritmo, sintaxe, sentido etc. Nossa hipótese envolve, então, a questão de como os modos de dizer da canção popular, numa dada língua-cultura, determinariam o resultado da tradução. Essa experimentação deve, segundo esperamos, contribuir para os Estudos da Tradução por redimensionar alguns aspectos do texto de acordo com a dinâmica da vocalização. Esses resultados são tanto acadêmicos, em termos da discussão sobre a própria tradução, quanto artísticos, como música de blues composta para o público brasileiro, apresentando Langston Hughes, relativamente pouco conhecido e traduzido no Brasil, na forma de um gênero musical que é amplamente disseminado por aqui. / If translation involves reading and rewriting, we might question how we read a text before questioning the rewriting. Poetry translation seems to continually deal with problems of rhythm, rhyme, syntax, meaning, register. What if the translator understands reading as performance in order to reconceive all those issues within the perspective of another medium, which could free him from the constraints of writing? Researcher Peter Low (2003) suggests that poetry translators ask themselves whether they would like their texts to be recited, set to music etc., rather than just silently read. There would be, then, a functional alteration, and the target text would have a different skopos (REISS and VERMEER, 1996). We propose working with the latent force of the voice in the text; with a possibility of performance inscribed in the written medium: the vocality of Paul Zumthor (1993). The Afro-American poet Langston Hughes (1902-67) wrote poems very similar to blues lyrics and knowingly spoke (or even sung) his lines while creating them. That might suggest something about a way to read, absorb and recreate his poetry in another language. Our goal, therefore, is to translate his blues poems while singing and playing them on the guitar. The resulting blues songs in Portuguese are registered on a CD attached to this thesis. Our method is to set them to music while translating them, because the simultaneity of the processes is exactly what might interfere in the linguistic choices, influencing aspects of rhythm, meaning etc. Our hypothesis involves, then, the discussion of how the modes of expression of the popular song, in a given system of language-culture, would determine the results of the translation. That sort of experimentation will hopefully contribute to the Translation Studies by rearranging certain aspects of the text according to the dynamics of vocalization. These results are both academic, in terms of the discussion about translation itself; and artistic, as blues music composed for the Brazilian audience, presenting Langston Hughes, relatively unknown and non-translated in Brazil, in the form of a musical genre which is widely disseminated here.

Se a tradução envolve leitura e reescrita, nós poderíamos questionar o modo como se lê antes de questionar o modo como se reescreve. A tradução de poesia parece continuamente lidar com problemas de ritmo, rima, sintaxe, sentido, registro linguístico. Mas e se o tradutor, entendendo a leitura como performance, recolocar tais questões sob a perspectiva de outra mídia, que possa libertá-lo das restrições da escrita? O pesquisador Peter Low (2003) provoca os tradutores de poesia a se questionarem se desejam que seus textos sejam vocalizados (recitados, musicados etc.), e não apenas lidos silenciosamente. Haveria, então, uma alteração funcional e, consequentemente, um texto de chegada com um skopos diferente (REISS e VERMEER, 1996). Trata-se de trabalhar com a força latente da voz no texto; com uma possibilidade de performance inscrita na mídia escrita: a vocalidade, como coloca Paul Zumthor (1993). O poeta negro estadunidense Langston Hughes (1902-67) escrevia poemas semelhantes a letras de blues e recitava seus versos no ato da criação, o que pode sugerir algo a respeito de um possível modo de ler, absorver e recriar sua poesia em outra língua. Nosso objetivo, portanto, é traduzir seus poemas de blues ao cantá-los e tocá-los no violão. As canções de blues resultantes, em português, estão registradas em CD que foi inserido como apêndice da tese. Nosso método consiste em musicá-los enquanto os traduzimos, pois a simultaneidade dos processos é precisamente aquilo que interfere nas escolhas linguísticas, influenciando aspectos de ritmo, sintaxe, sentido etc. Nossa hipótese envolve, então, a questão de como os modos de dizer da canção popular, numa dada língua-cultura, determinariam o resultado da tradução. Essa experimentação deve, segundo esperamos, contribuir para os Estudos da Tradução por redimensionar alguns aspectos do texto de acordo com a dinâmica da vocalização. Esses resultados são tanto acadêmicos, em termos da discussão sobre a própria tradução, quanto artísticos, como música de blues composta para o público brasileiro, apresentando Langston Hughes, relativamente pouco conhecido e traduzido no Brasil, na forma de um gênero musical que é amplamente disseminado por aqui. / If translation involves reading and rewriting, we might question how we read a text before questioning the rewriting. Poetry translation seems to continually deal with problems of rhythm, rhyme, syntax, meaning, register. What if the translator understands reading as performance in order to reconceive all those issues within the perspective of another medium, which could free him from the constraints of writing? Researcher Peter Low (2003) suggests that poetry translators ask themselves whether they would like their texts to be recited, set to music etc., rather than just silently read. There would be, then, a functional alteration, and the target text would have a different skopos (REISS and VERMEER, 1996). We propose working with the latent force of the voice in the text; with a possibility of performance inscribed in the written medium: the vocality of Paul Zumthor (1993). The Afro-American poet Langston Hughes (1902-67) wrote poems very similar to blues lyrics and knowingly spoke (or even sung) his lines while creating them. That might suggest something about a way to read, absorb and recreate his poetry in another language. Our goal, therefore, is to translate his blues poems while singing and playing them on the guitar. The resulting blues songs in Portuguese are registered on a CD attached to this thesis. Our method is to set them to music while translating them, because the simultaneity of the processes is exactly what might interfere in the linguistic choices, influencing aspects of rhythm, meaning etc. Our hypothesis involves, then, the discussion of how the modes of expression of the popular song, in a given system of language-culture, would determine the results of the translation. That sort of experimentation will hopefully contribute to the Translation Studies by rearranging certain aspects of the text according to the dynamics of vocalization. These results are both academic, in terms of the discussion about translation itself; and artistic, as blues music composed for the Brazilian audience, presenting Langston Hughes, relatively unknown and non-translated in Brazil, in the form of a musical genre which is widely disseminated here.

The New Negro Movement (often called the Harlem Renaissance) made black creative production visible to an extent unprecedented in American History. Complex representations of African Americans started to infiltrate a popular culture previously dominated by stereotypes; people from all walks of life were confronted for the first time with art made by African Americans that asked them to think in new ways about the meaning of race in America. The term Harlem Renaissance conjures up images of urban America, but the creative energies of many New Negro figures were actually focused elsewhere—on rural America. Urbanite Jean Toomer spent time teaching in an agricultural college in the rural South, and wrote award-winning poetry and prose about that experience. Langston Hughes wrote blues lyrics about the struggles of rural migrants in New York that highlighted the complex interconnections of rural and urban experience. And the pioneer black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux incorporated numerous fictionalized accounts of his own experiences as a homesteader in South Dakota into his race movies and novels. New Negro writers asserted that their art shaped how people understood themselves and were understood by others. Accordingly, this project examines both literary representations, and how literary works related to the real lives and struggles of rural African Americans. My research combines archival, literary, and biographical materials to analyze the aesthetic choices of three New Negro authors (Hughes, Micheaux, and Toomer), and explain the interrelated literary and cultural contexts that shaped their depictions of African American rural life. Houston Baker, in his influential 1987 book Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, defined black modernism as an awareness of radical uncertainty in human life. My central contention is that one of the most radical uncertainties in interwar-period America was the changing rural landscape. I revisit the largely-forgotten (though large-scale) social movement to fight rural outmigration by modernizing rural life. And I argue that, rather than accepting the simple binary that took the urban to be modern and the rural backward, African Americans in the 1920s created and experienced complicated formulations of the rural and its connections to modern blackness. / text

Langston Hughes' novel Not Without Laughter works within the historically narrow framework of African American uplift ideology. Hughes implies Booker T. Washington's racial uplift ideology from Up From Slavery within Aunt Hager Williams. In addition, Hughes implies W.E.B. DuBois' racial uplift ideology from Souls of Black Folk within Tempy Siles. In both characters, he criticizes the ideologies. In addition, the ideologies work toward an initial construction of masculinity for Sandy, the protagonist, and ultimately undermine an argument for gender equality.