...Analysis of a Poem: “THEME FOR ENGLISH B” by Langston Hughes Theme for English B was written by Langston Hughes. Langston Hughes has inspired the hearts and paved the way for many African American poets. James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet and playwright whose African American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, artistic explosion which took place in Harlem between the end of World War 1 and the middle of the 1930s. Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. He passed away in New York City on May 22, 1967 at the age of 65. Langston Hughes was a notorious American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Langston Hughes was best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. Most of Hughes best work was written during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. His poetry made a huge contribution to the African American culture and the entire world. As I begin to ponder about ‘’Theme for English B’’ (an assignment given by Hughes’ Professor for students to write a paper), I try to imagine how things were back then. The poem starts off referencing a 22 year old colored man who is making his way towards the Harlem Branch Y, where he begins to write an essay. This poem, “Theme for English B” allows Langston Hughes to tackle the biggest issues on his world during this period of time; a world where black people were subjected...
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...Harlem Renaissance Poets Hum 112 June 4, 2013 Harlem Renaissance Poets The Harlem Renaissance was the time period that immediately followed the First World War. During the great migration a vast number of African Americans left the southern states to relocate to northern states such as Chicago, New York, and Washington DC. They were in search of new employment and artistic opportunities. This was the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance era where African American artist (musicians and poets) called themselves the “New Negro”. The two Poets I chose to discuss throughout this essay are Langston Hughes and Claude McKay. I will be discussing their roles during the Harlem Renaissance, The elements of double consciousness within their poetry, and the primary themes seen in poetry during this time period. Langston Hughes Langston Hughes was one of the most influential writers during the Harlem Renaissance. His unique style of writing incorporated Jazz and Blues music into poetry. Langston Hughes played a significant role during the Harlem Renaissance period, his work became the voice for the average African American struggling to deal with the stress / pressures of being racially discriminated against. His poems encouraged them to love their brown skin and accept who they are and not how they are seen by their white counterparts. Instead of African Americans sacrificing their identity (culture) to blend into the white society he encouraged Negroes to have a sense of pride in...
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...Jalen Beasley Language Arts - Pd. 7 Team: Sparta 02-11-13 HYPERTEXT POETRY ANALYSIS POEM: Harlem(by Langston Hughes)What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load.Or does it explode? | STEP 1: 1 Did Langston Hughes ever feel this way about his dream? 2 Why do dreams just sag? 3 Why are dreams like a heavy load? 4 Why is a dream like a raisin in the sun? 5 Why is a dream like a sore? 6 Why did Langston Hughes write this poem? 7 Why do dreams dry up? 8 Why are dreams syrupy sweet? STEP 2: Category: Questions about the author: 1 Did Langston Hughes ever feel this way about his dream? 2 Why did Langston Hughes write this poem? Category Questions about the poem: 3. Why do dreams just sag? 4. Why are dreams like a heavy load? 5. Why is a dream like a raisin in the sun? 6. Why is a dream like a sore? 7. Why do dreams dry up? 8. Why are dreams syrupy sweet? STEP 3: Answers to questions in Step 1 1 Yes, Langston Hughes has felt this way about his dreams 2 Dreams sag because sometimes you don’t achieve all of your dreams 3 Because some dreams are a heavy burden that are going to take you along time to achieve and you may not know how you are going to achieve them, you may feel you do not have the money to achieve your dreams. 4 Because...
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...Birth of a Civilization An analysis of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes 5/26/2008 American Literature 2328-8448 Deah N. Mitchell The violation of the African civilization that is known as slavery is defined as “a submission to a dominating influence” by Merriam-Webster. There are many accounts of this practice, and many more attempts to rectify its toll on African-Americans and its long-standing consequences. One such effort is the rhythmical reflection of ancestry through artistry- specifically poetry. During the Harlem Renaissance era several African American writers emerged. One of the most prominent and successful authors was James Mercer Langston Hughes. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” was written by Hughes at the tender age of 19. This poem is reflective of four central topics: African-American ancestry, racial pride, slavery and spirituality. The most obvious use of literary art, symbolism, plays a tremendous role in this poem and is effortlessly laced throughout the seams of this intricate ode. “I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” According to the most widely accepted theories on the origins of man, homo sapiens’ appear to have originated in Great Rift Valley in Africa. Above the “rivers” can be interpreted as ancient African ancestry. The writer knows from handed down accounts the story of his people’s lineage. If Africa is home to all of our births then...
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...WHEATLEY AND LANGSTON HUGHES February 25, 2012 ANALYZING AND COMPARING PHILLIS WHEATLEY AND LANGSTON HUGHES Abstract: The aim of this text is to analyze two completely different poets (Phillis Wheatley and Langston Hughes) who lived in several times, however who shared constant theme in the analyzed works. Our intention is to indicate how society has not developed when it concerns the position of negroes: either as voters or persons. Through two selected poems and their analyses, it's supposed to indicate how the tones may change, however the theme remains the same. 1. Introduction Many things may inspire somebody to write down – be it poetry or prose. it has been like this since communication established itself, through generations and throughout time the writings have had a very important role. for some folks writing is also solely how to establish communication, as newspapers and magazines. For some others, it's an inner pleasure to share feelings and concepts, like in journals and theories. However, for others it is an instrument for additional definite purposes, like awareness regarding movements or a personal catharsis – Sylvia Plath’s poetry, for example. Therefore, the power of words helped mankind to change the globe. Bearing in mind this concept that literature may renew and reinforce a belief or an idea, the theme of the analysis supposed in this work comparing Phillis Wheatley’s poem “On Being Brought...
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...The poem raises the question how the African-American dream will...
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...Joseph Fitzpatrick 4/22/2015 Poetry Analysis 1.Gretel in Darkness Listening to Gretel voice I believe she may have post-traumatic stress disorder. She cannot get the idea of the killing out of her head. She seems like she is praying to Hansel to help her with her guilt. She seems to want to wash away the pain of killing even though she knows what she did was right. 2. Suicide Note The speaker apologizes to her parents for not being a strong man. She believes that if she were a boy her parents would not have been disappointed with her less than perfect grade point average. The attitude she displays to her parents is on of despair and resignation. 3. The World is Too Much With Us The speaker feels that people have lost touch with nature because of modernization of the world. He thinks that man is wasting away because of how he has touched every piece of land the eye can see. 4. Porphyrias Lover This poem reminded me a lot of the short story “The Lottery” in regards to situational irony. The poem begins with the narrator observing a beautiful woman who he wants very much to love him. He then changes from the observer to a crazed psycho participant. 5. Ozymandias This is a different type of situational irony. The irony here is one of beliefs. That a boastful king can build a monument that will last forever. The poem shows that the king is silly to believe he can stop time. 6. Pied Beauty The poet uses words to describe...
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...Lounge * Resources * Terms of Service * Writing Guidelines * Mandy's Market * Contests * Annual Tanka Contest * Tanka Time * Where Tanka Prose Grows Poetry Analysis: Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden Written by Kerry Michael Wood User Rating: / 9 ------------------------------------------------- Top of Form PoorBest Bottom of Form Poetry Analysis: Those Winter Sundays (Poem by Robert Hayden) I met Bob Hayden in the late 1970s when I, a callow high-school teacher, joined him and others in a textbook authorship project. I was in awe of the former poet laureate of Senegal and later America's first black poet laureate. A soft-spoken gentleman behind thick-lensed glasses, he put me at ease with his unassuming camaraderie. He didn't speak much about himself. Other co-authors and editors sketched for me his early life: the fact that he had no birth certificate but was born with the name Asa Bundy Sheffey of parents who then separated; how at 18 months he was given to next-door neighbors who renamed him, though he was never legally adopted; how once he became a literary figure, he refused to be called a Negro poet and by so doing won the friendship and respect of Harlem Renaissance writers like Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. I treasure my memory of Robert Hayden. *************************** Robert Hayden's tribute to his foster father demonstrates the effectiveness of understatement, brevity and artful imagery. Mingled...
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...University of North Carolina at Pembroke English and Theatre DEPARTMENT COURSE: ENG 2100: African American Literature Fall 2014 INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Charles Tita OFFICE: West Building, Office of Distance Education OFFICE HOURS: Monday 4-6 and Tuesday/Thursday 10:30-12 OFFICE PHONE: 521 6352 FAX: 910 521 6762 EMAIL ADDRESS: charles.tita@uncp.edu LECTURE TIME: Tuesday/Thursday 2-3:15pm LOCATION: DIAL 147 REQUIRED TEXT Gates Jr., Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay, eds. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004. OPTIONAL REFERENCES Locke, Alain, ed. The New Negro. New York: Atheneum, 1968. hooks, bell. Teaching to Trangress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Harrold, Stanley. American Abolitionists. New York: Pearson Education, 2001. Youngs, J. William T. American Realities: Historical Episodes-From First Settlements to the Civil War. New York: Longman, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. COURSE DESCRIPTION: A survey of African American literature, introducing students to genres, trends, and major periods of African American literature, ranging from the 17th-, 18th- and 19th- century autobiographies and narratives to 20tth –century works. Authors include: Jupiter Hammon, Briton Hammon, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner, Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison...
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...it may seem ironic that The United States of America is known as “the land of the free” considering that majority of their ancestors entered the US as slaves. African Americans were brought to North America via the middle passage which originated during the fifteenth century. They were enslaved for approximately 400 hundred years until the end of the Civil War in 1865. Although African Americans were enslaved in America, they were determine to survive and one day be freed in this great country. During The African American’s journey to freedom several significant events took place which was inclusive of but not limited to: The Civil Rights Movement of 1865-1877, Separate but Equal Legislation (Plessy vs. Ferguson court case) in 1896, The Harlem Renaissance of 1920, Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, The March on Washington Movement of 1963, and The Black Power Movement of the late 1960s and 1970. I will discuss the significance of these events in relation to the African American journey to freedom and how they have help shape American society today. THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT OF 1865-1877 Frequently when one hears of the Civil Rights Movement we automatically think of the Civil Rights events that had taken place in the 1950-1970s. However, the Civil Rights Movement actually began in the 1860-1870s immediately following the Conclusion of the Civil War. After hundreds of years of enslavement of African Americans, the Civil War was fought with the intent to abolish slavery. The...
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...| | CCRS | CONTENT STANDARDS | EVIDENCE OF STUDENT ATTAINMENT | RESOURCES | 91929384130 | EIGHTH GRADE: TO BE COMPLETED THROUGHOUT THE COURSEREADING LITERATURE: RANGE OF READING AND LEVEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY By the end of the year, read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poems, at the high end of Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RL.8.10]READING STANDARDS FOR INFORMATIONAL TEXT: RANGE OF READING AND LEVEL OF TEXT COMPLEXITY By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the Grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently. [RI.8.10]WRITING STANDARDS: RANGE OF WRITING Write routinely over extended time frames, including time for research, reflection, and revision, and shorter time frames such as a single sitting or a day or two for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences. [W.8.10]KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE Use knowledge of language and its conventions when writing, speaking, reading, or listening. [L.8.3]VOCABULARY ACQUISTION AND USE Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases; gather vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression. [L.8.6]SPEAKING AND LISTENING STANDARDS Engage effectively in a range of...
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...English 311.01 (13471): The History of African-American Writing Fall 2015 Tuesday, Thursday 11:00-12:15 JR 244 Professor Nate Millsnathaniel.mills@csun.eduOffice hours: Tuesdays 1:00-3:30 and by appointmentSierra Tower 718 | Course Description / Objectives Through a historical survey of the work of major African-American writers from slavery to the present, this course will examine the defining features of African-American expression. The course is organized around a foundational question: what makes African-American literature African-American? Is it just a set of texts that happen to have been written by authors who identified as black in their respective historical moments? Are there distinct formal and thematic paradigms that unify these texts into a coherent literary tradition? What relation do black texts bear to other black texts, as well as to the Western canon? Are African-American texts necessarily “political,” by definition protesting the social and political marginalization of black people in America? Do African-American texts represent the particular experiences of African Americans, or do they (also?) address universal problems and experiences? The cultural, literary-formal, and political distinctiveness of African-American writing will thus be the guiding theme of this course’s rigorous, fast-moving survey. Additionally, students in 311 will acquire knowledge of the following: * The ways African-American...
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...Narrative A narrative is a sequence of events that a narrator tells in story form. A narrator is a storyteller of any kind, whether the authorial voice in a novel or a friend telling you about last night’s party. Point of View The point of view is the perspective that a narrative takes toward the events it describes. First-person narration: A narrative in which the narrator tells the story from his/her own point of view and refers to him/herself as “I.” The narrator may be an active participant in the story or just an observer. When the point of view represented is specifically the author’s, and not a fictional narrator’s, the story is autobiographical and may be nonfictional (see Common Literary Forms and Genres below). Third-person narration: The narrator remains outside the story and describes the characters in the story using proper names and the third-person pronouns “he,” “she,” “it,” and “they.” • Omniscient narration: The narrator knows all of the actions, feelings, and motivations of all of the characters. For example, the narrator of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina seems to know everything about all the characters and events in the story. • Limited omniscient narration: The narrator knows the actions, feelings, and motivations of only one or a handful of characters. For example, the narrator of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has full knowledge of only Alice. • Free indirect discourse: The narrator conveys a character’s inner thoughts...
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...critical theory today critical theory today A Us e r - F r i e n d l y G u i d e S E C O N D E D I T I O N L O I S T Y S O N New York London Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN © 2006 by Lois Tyson Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business Printed in the United States of America on acid‑free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number‑10: 0‑415‑97410‑0 (Softcover) 0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number‑13: 978‑0‑415‑97410‑3 (Softcover) 978‑0‑415‑97409‑7 (Hardcover) No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data Tyson, Lois, 1950‑ Critical theory today : a user‑friendly guide / Lois Tyson.‑‑ 2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0‑415‑97409‑7 (hb) ‑‑ ISBN 0‑415‑97410‑0 (pb) 1. Criticism...
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...NORTH AMERICAN FICTION BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Before starting our study of American Fiction we must understand what American Literature is in itself and which pieces of writing we can include within this label. It is believed that when a piece is written in North America, more precisely in the USA, it would automatically be given this epithet. But it should be taken into account that this idea is quite broad and doesn’t reflect the real essence of the term. However, there is also another definition that gathers this essence: American Literature is the one that represents the Americanism, the singularity of the USA philosophy and culture. This way, instead of focusing on who the author is, it is focused on the content of the writing. In that which concerns Fiction, the following documents are the ones considered as narrative: Speeches Letters Short Stories Essays Political Documents Sermons Novels Diaries 1 FIRST LITERARY EXPRESSIONS The first documents in which the idea of Americanism is very present are the Sermons. They respond to the strict Protestantism settled in the New Continent after the arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers and Puritans in the Mayflower (1620) and the Arabella (1630). They established a theocratic community whose main and only point of reference was the Bible. That is why the idea of the ‘city upon a hill’ is still very present in American mentality. As we all know...
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