Perhaps the single best-known and most highly regarded African-American writer of his time, Langston Hughes (1902-1967) has left a profound mark on American letters. Taking the environment of urban blacks, Hughes captured in verse and prose its joys and pains, bringing a new realism to the subject. His language, while unadorned in style, remained spirited and true to colloquial speech, and his work was among the first by a black man to gain a multi-racial and national audience. Hughes is primarily remembered for his poetry, with which he established his reputation in the 1920s. He did not even publish his first collection of short fiction, The Ways of White Folks, until 1934. But precisely because it appeared after he had undergone an extensive process of artistic and personal development, it possesses an unusual coherence and power. It deals unflinchingly with racial, class, and sexual issues, as does his second collection, Laughing to Keep from Crying (1952). In 1950 a number of satirical sketches featuring Hughes's character Jesse B. Simple began appearing in collected form. These represent a tradition distinct from his other work. Hans Ostrom examines Hughes's short fiction canon in great detail, bringing in a wealth of information on Hughes's background and times to provide a fuller understanding. He discusses events such as the Harlem Renaissance and how they relate to Hughes, as well as sensitively examining the issue of race. Within a clear and coherent organizational scheme, Ostrom adds excerpts from interviews and letters and a section on the best previous scholarship and criticism. The result is a truly useful study.
But the “ open form ” resulting from what Robert M. Adams calls an “ unresolved tension ” between Cervantes's pair " 3 may have provided a suggestive design along with adapted details . Twain himself , we know , greatly approved the ...
Here are more than 1,800 quotations, organized from A-to-Z, from America's consummate author--Mark Twain.
His research into modern religious faith and forms of spirituality is from a psychological and empirical perspective rather than intuitive or spiritual . The other primary male character in the novel is Plucky Purcell , who represents ...
for Palmer , she learns from his sadistic " lessons in manliness " ( II , 143 ) to harden her will and suppress the feminine longing for protection . The narrative moves quickly to Susan's success in overcoming her exploiter .
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Edward Hudlin maintains that the book follows very closely the structure of the heroic myth as outlined by Joseph Campbell ... Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope look at Dorothy's adventures from a mythological and feminist perspective.19 ...
The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 1995 . Rose , Margaret . Parody : Ancient , Modern , and Post - Modern . Literature , Culture , Theory . Cambridge : Cambridge UP , 1993 . Rowe , John Carlos .
Chronicles the life and career of American author Herman Melville, uncovering autobiographical elements in his diverse works, discussing the historical and cultural implications of his writing, and assessing his accomplishments as a writer.
At whatever level of consciousness , this was Hurston's method of getting a predominantly white society to try on a different and African American subjectivity , one that appeals to the deepest of mythic archetypes .
KAREN TEI YAMASHITA (1951- ) 1 Robin E. Field ♢ BIOGRAPHY Karen Tei Yamashita, a third-generation Japanese American, ... nation and culture; and in an essay in her recent collection Circle K Cycles, she instead claims the term nikkei, ...