The Harlem Renaissance
What, where, and when?
Naissance = Birth
Renaissance = Rebirth
Where is Harlem? Upper West-side of Manhattan
When? After WWI to 1930
A flourishing and valorization of African American arts and
scholarship.
Why?
African Americans seeking manufacturing jobs flock to
Northern Cities
Escaping Jim Crow South
The boom years of the ’20s meant there was a lot of money
to fund the arts.
White Americans gained a new respect for African and
therefore African American art due to its popularity in
Modern art produced by Europeans.
A Cultural Movement
Louis Armstrong (trumpet)
Bessie Smith (singer)
W.E.B. DuBois (scholar, first African Am. to receive PhD
from Harvard)
Many writers: Langston Hughes, Claude McKay
Accomplishments
Extended the scope of what was considered “literature” and
added some of the most famous works to American
Literature.
Affirmed that black dialects were as legitimate as standard
English.
Opened the door to future writers and artists.
Langston Hughes
Page 823 – Bio.
“I, too, sing America”
Which American author is he responding to?
-Walt Whitman
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers”? Page 833
How old was he when he wrote the poem? Why do you
say so? – 19 years old
Claude McKay
“If We Must Die” - 1922
What is a Sonnet? A Shakespearean Sonnet?
- A Shakespearean sonnet is a 14-line poem written in iambic pentameter
with three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet. It follows the rhyme
scheme: ababcdcdefefgg.
Why is a Sonnet called “a way of thinking”?
Because the first 8-lines—an octave—sets up a problem, question, or
situation, and the last 6-lines—a sestet—responds to that problem, question,
or situation.