Studies in African and Afro-American Culture – serie

Black poets of the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1929) relied heavily upon traditional rhetorical devices, specifically irony and paradox. In contrast, their counterparts of the sixties adopted a more radical approach, employing instead street idiom and other modes of Black discourse. While the poets’ strategies of the two periods differ, one element remained constant – the theme of protest. It is this similarity in purpose that marks the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance as a precursor of the revolutionary poetry of the sixties.

Cane one of the major works of the Harlem Renaissance and Jean Toomer’s imagist masterpiece, is now a part of the canon in Afro-American literature. Teaching Jean Toomer’s 1923 Cane is a unique literary tool that explores the brilliance and far-sighted vision of Toomer, allowing Cane to be taught holistically as a discovery process, using the blues motif and the poetic essay. This book’s text and figures ground a discussion of Cane’s enigmatic and figurative language, connecting the Harlem Renaissance to the Negritude Movement and to later Afro-centric literary movements. This book also reviews P.B.S. Pinchback’s legacy as a non-Negro, able to pass easily in white society, the influence of Ouspensky, H. L Mencken’s critical work, The Paris Brotherhood, and «Saccaharum officinarum-G.» Like the lunar arcs dividing Cane, the book works as an instructional map. The pictures from the first complete production also tell a remarkable story.