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African-American literature

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I tried to avoid any literal quality. One remarkable thing about both of Service's best-known ballads is how easily he wrote them. It was as if someone was whispering in my ear. It was a marvelous experience. Before I crawled into my bed at five in the morning, my ballad was in the bag. As I started in: There are strange things done in the midnight sun, verse after verse developed with scarce a check Next day, with scarcely any effort of memory I put it on paper. MacMechan did give grudging respect to Service's World War I poetry, conceding that his style went well with that subject, and that "his Rhymes of a Red Cross Man are an advance on his previous volumes.

He has come into touch with the grimmest of realities; and while his radical faults have not been cured, his rude lines drive home the truth that he has seen. Reviewing Service's Rhymes of a Rebel in , Frye remarked that the book "interests me chiefly because I have noticed so much verse in exactly the same idiom , and I wonder how far Mr. Service's books may have influenced it. There was a time, fifty years ago," he added," when Robert W. Service represented, with some accuracy, the general level of poetic experience in Canada, as far as the popular reader was concerned Service has also been noted for his use of ethnonyms that would normally be considered offensive "slurs", but with no insult apparently intended.

Words used in Service's poetry include jerries Germans , dago Italian , pickaninny in reference to a Mozambican infant , cheechako newcomer to the Yukon and Alaska gold fields, usually from the U. He was also honoured on a Canadian postage stamp in The Robert Service Way , a main road in Whitehorse, is named after him.

In Canadian-born country singer Hank Snow recorded recitations of eight of Service's longer poems for an album entitled Tales of the Yukon. The album was released by RCA Victor. Snow and other musicians including Chet Atkins and Chubby Wise provided background music. The Canadian whiskey Yukon Jack incorporated various excerpts of his writings in their ads in the s, one of which was the first four lines of his poem, "The Men Who Don't Fit In".

The town of Lancieux , where he used to come every summer, organized several recognitions to the memory of Robert W. One of the streets of Lancieux has been called Robert Service Street. On July 13, , a commemorative tablet was unveiled at the Lancieux Office du Tourisme by the daughter of the poet: An evening of celebration was organized afterwards with a dinner attended by many guests from Scotland and the Yukon. Service's life and work in both places.

Robert Service lived from to in a small two-room cabin on 8th Avenue which he rented from Edna Clarke in Dawson City. He wrote in his autobiography:. In it was taken over by Parks Canada , which maintains it, including its sod roof, as a tourist attraction.

Irish-born actor Tom Byrne created The Robert Service Show which was presented in the front yard of the cabin, starting in This was very popular for summer visitors and set the standard for Robert Service recitations. A resurgence in sales of Service's works followed the institution of these performances. Since the show has been held at the Westmark Hotel in Dawson City during the summer months. At the Service Cabin, local Dawson entertainers dressed in period costumes and employed by Parks Canada offer biographical information and recite Service's poetry for visitors. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For other uses, see Robert Service disambiguation. This article's lead section does not adequately summarize key points of its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page.

Robert Service senior father Sarah Emily Parker mother. Bard of the Yukon ", Whitehorse Star online archive, September 11, Service ," Who2 Profiles, Answers. Hurtig, , — Mitham, Introduction to "Mossback Minstrelsy: Service ," Canadian Poetry No. Service — Great War Medals". Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries gives the first biographical account, strongly emphasising Keats' supposedly humble origins, a misconception which still continues.

These early writings coloured all subsequent biography and have become embedded in a body of Keats legend. Shelley promoted Keats as someone whose achievement could not be separated from agony, who was 'spiritualised' by his decline and too fine-tuned to endure the harshness of life; the consumptive, suffering image popularly held today. The idealised image of the heroic romantic poet who battled poverty and died young was inflated by the late arrival of an authoritative biography and the lack of an accurate likeness.

Most of the surviving portraits of Keats were painted after his death, and those who knew him held that they did not succeed in capturing his unique quality and intensity. It was directed by John Barnes. He is the companion and sidekick of the protagonist. In Dan Simmons ' book Hyperion , one of the characters is a clone of John Keats, of whom he possesses personality and memories. In Tim Powers ' book The Stress of Her Regard , John Keats, along with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, is the victim of a vampire and his gift with language and poetry is a direct consequence of the vampire breed's attention.

As a Shakespearean, Keats is recruited by naval lieutenant Andrew Sullivan to spy on the antagonist, Adrian Hart, who has dubbed himself 'Iago'. Keats' letters were first published in and During the 19th century, critics deemed them unworthy of attention, distractions from his poetic works. Eliot described them as "certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet.

Eliot wrote of Keats' conclusions; "There is hardly one statement of Keats' about poetry which Few of Keats' letters are extant from the period before he joined his literary circle. From spring , however, there is a rich record of his prolific and impressive skills as letter writer. They glitter with humour and critical intelligence. Keats also reflected on the background and composition of his poetry, and specific letters often coincide with or anticipate the poems they describe. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [chameleon] Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation.

A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity — he is continually in for — and filling some other Body — The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute — the poet has none; no identity — he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.

A temperate sharpness about it I never lik'd the stubbled fields as much as now — Aye, better than the chilly green of spring. Somehow the stubble plain looks warm — in the same way as some pictures look warm — this struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it". Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; [81].

African-American literature - Wikipedia

Later, To Autumn became one of the most highly regarded poems in the English language. There are areas of his life and daily routine that Keats does not describe. He mentions little about his childhood or his financial straits and is seemingly embarrassed to discuss them. There is a total absence of any reference to his parents. The publications of letters to Fanny Brawne in focused on this period and emphasised this tragic aspect, giving rise to widespread criticism at the time.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Keats disambiguation. Posthumous portrait of John Keats by William Hilton. National Portrait Gallery, London. There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds. Nineteenth Century Literary Manuscripts, Part 4. Retrieved 29 January It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the case of Mr John Keats He was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady For some time we were in hopes that he might get off with a violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible.

The phrenzy of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of Endymion It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; so back to the [apothecary] shop Mr John, back to 'plasters, pills, and ointment boxes' ".

Cambridge University Press, This Craft of Verse.

Retrieved 23 April Retrieved 17 September University of Chicago Press. Retrieved October 31, Auszug aus einer brieflichen Mitteilung an den Herausgeber. Edited by Dinah Birch. Oxford University Press Inc. Life of John Keats. Oxford University Press, The Guardian , 22 July John Keats and Fanny Brawne. The Times , 2 November The Guardian , 26 October An Elegy on the Death of John Keats.

The Guardian , 7 May Retrieved 15 February It was published that July and he came to view it as his "least imperfect" work. Retrieved 11 February Bate, Walter Jackson Contra Mundum Press, Brown, Charles Armitage The Life of John Keats , ed. Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship. What's in an Urn? De Almeida, Hermione Romantic Medicine and John Keats.

Gittings, Robert Selected poems and letters of Keats London: University of Alabama Press.

A life of John Keats. The Life and Letters of John Keats. The Greeks in Schiller and Lukacs". Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts.

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University Press of New England. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. The Odes of John Keats. The Making of a Poet. Until his death in , Hughes published nine volumes of poetry, eight books of short stories, two novels and a number of plays , children's books and translations. Although Hurston wrote 14 books that ranged from anthropology to short stories to novel-length fiction, her writings fell into obscurity for decades. Walker found in Hurston a role model for all female African-American writers.

Andrew T. Kamei-Dyche

While Hurston and Hughes are the two most influential writers to come out of the Harlem Renaissance, a number of other writers also became well known during this period. They include Jean Toomer , author of Cane , a famous collection of stories, poems, and sketches about rural and urban Black life, and Dorothy West , whose novel The Living is Easy examined the life of an upper-class Black family. Another popular renaissance writer is Countee Cullen , who in his poems described everyday black life such as a trip he made to Baltimore that was ruined by a racial insult.

A Novel of Negro Life , which focused on intraracial prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African-American literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read by other Black people. With the renaissance, though, African-American literature—as well as black fine art and performance art—began to be absorbed into mainstream American culture.

During this Great Migration , Black people left the racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities such as Chicago , where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy.

This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing Civil Rights Movement , which made a powerful impression on Black writers during the s, '50s and '60s. Just as Black activists were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism, so too were Black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings. One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin , whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality.

Baldwin, who is best known for his novel Go Tell It on the Mountain , wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining what it was like to be both Black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. Baldwin's idol and friend was author Richard Wright , whom Baldwin called "the greatest Black writer in the world for me".

Wright is best known for his novel Native Son , which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Baldwin was so impressed by the novel that he titled a collection of his own essays Notes of a Native Son , in reference to Wright's novel.

William Hazlitt

However, their friendship fell apart due to one of the book's essays, "Everybody's Protest Novel," which criticized Native Son for lacking credible characters and psychological complexity. The other great novelist of this period is Ralph Ellison , best known for his novel Invisible Man , which won the National Book Award in Even though he did not complete another novel during his lifetime, Invisible Man was so influential that it secured his place in literary history.

After Ellison's death in , a second novel, Juneteenth , was pieced together from the 2,plus pages he had written over 40 years. A fuller version of the manuscript was published as Three Days Before the Shooting The Civil Rights time period also saw the rise of female Black poets, most notably Gwendolyn Brooks , who became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize when it was awarded for her book of poetry, Annie Allen.

Along with Brooks, other female poets who became well known during the s and '60s are Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez. During this time, a number of playwrights also came to national attention, notably Lorraine Hansberry , whose play A Raisin in the Sun focuses on a poor Black family living in Chicago. Another playwright who gained attention was Amiri Baraka , who wrote controversial off-Broadway plays. In more recent years, Baraka became known for his poetry and music criticism.

It is also worth noting that a number of important essays and books about human rights were written by the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. Beginning in the s, African-American literature reached the mainstream as books by Black writers continually achieved best-selling and award-winning status. This was also the time when the work of African-American writers began to be accepted by academia as a legitimate genre of American literature. A number of scholars and writers are generally credited with helping to promote and define African-American literature as a genre during this time period, including fiction writers Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and poet James Emanuel.

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Negro Literature in America , a collection of black writings released by a major publisher. Toni Morrison , meanwhile, helped promote Black literature and authors when she worked as an editor for Random House in the s and '70s, where she edited books by such authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. Morrison herself would later emerge as one of the most important African-American writers of the 20th century. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye , was published in Among her most famous novels is Beloved , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in This story describes a slave who found freedom but killed her infant daughter to save her from a life of slavery.

Another important novel is Song of Solomon , a tale about materialism , unrequited love , and brotherhood. In the s novelist and poet Alice Walker wrote a famous essay that brought Zora Neale Hurston and her classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God back to the attention of the literary world. An epistolary novel a book written in the form of letters , The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a young woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather and then is forced to marry a man who physically abuses her.

The novel was later made into a film by Steven Spielberg. The s also saw African-American books topping the bestseller lists. Among the first to do so was Roots: A fictionalized account of Haley's family history—beginning with the kidnapping of his ancestor Kunta Kinte in Gambia through his life as a slave in the United States— Roots won the Pulitzer Prize and became a popular television miniseries.

Haley also wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X in African-American poets have also garnered attention. Cassells is a recipient of the William Carlos Williams Award. Lesser-known poets such as Thylias Moss also have been praised for their innovative work. Most recently, Edward P. African-American literature has also crossed over to genre fiction. A pioneer in this area is Chester Himes , who in the s and '60s wrote a series of pulp fiction detective novels featuring "Coffin" Ed Johnson and "Gravedigger" Jones, two New York City police detectives.

Himes paved the way for the later crime novels of Walter Mosley and Hugh Holton. African Americans are also represented in the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, with Samuel R. Delany , Octavia E. Saunders , John Ridley , John M. Faucette , Sheree Thomas and Nalo Hopkinson being just a few of the well-known authors.

Finally, African-American literature has gained added attention through the work of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey , who repeatedly has leveraged her fame to promote literature through the medium of her Oprah's Book Club. At times, she has brought African-American writers a far broader audience than they otherwise might have received. While African-American literature is well accepted in the United States, there are numerous views on its significance, traditions, and theories.

To the genre's supporters, African-American literature arose out of the experience of Blacks in the United States, especially with regards to historic racism and discrimination, and is an attempt to refute the dominant culture's literature and power. In addition, supporters see the literature existing both within and outside American literature and as helping to revitalize the country's writing. To critics [ who? In addition, there are some within the African-American community who do not like how their own literature sometimes showcases Black people.

Throughout American history, African Americans have been discriminated against and subject to racist attitudes. This experience inspired some Black writers, at least during the early years of African-American literature, to prove they were the equals of European-American authors.

As Henry Louis Gates, Jr, has said, "it is fair to describe the subtext of the history of black letters as this urge to refute the claim that because blacks had no written traditions they were bearers of an inferior culture. By refuting the claims of the dominant culture, African-American writers were also attempting to subvert the literary and power traditions of the United States.

Some scholars assert that writing has traditionally been seen as "something defined by the dominant culture as a white male activity. By borrowing from and incorporating the non-written oral traditions and folk life of the African diaspora , African-American literature broke "the mystique of connection between literary authority and patriarchal power.

This view of African-American literature as a tool in the struggle for Black political and cultural liberation has been stated for decades, perhaps most famously by W. According to Joanne Gabbin, a professor, African-American literature exists both inside and outside American literature. Even though African Americans have long claimed an American identity, during most of United States history they were not accepted as full citizens and were actively discriminated against.

As a result, they were part of America while also outside it. Similarly, African-American literature is within the framework of a larger American literature, but it also is independent. As a result, new styles of storytelling and unique voices have been created in relative isolation. The benefit of this is that these new styles and voices can leave their isolation and help revitalize the larger literary world McKay, This artistic pattern has held true with many aspects of African-American culture over the last century, with jazz and hip hop being just two artistic examples that developed in isolation within the Black community before reaching a larger audience and eventually revitalizing American culture.

Since African-American literature is already popular with mainstream audiences, its ability to develop new styles and voices—or to remain "authentic," in the words of some critics—may be a thing of the past. Some conservative academics and intellectuals argue that African-American literature exists as a separate topic only because of the balkanization of literature over the last few decades, or as an extension of the culture wars into the field of literature.

These critics reject bringing identity politics into literature because this would mean that "only women could write about women for women, and only Blacks about Blacks for Blacks. People opposed to this group-based approach to writing say that it limits the ability of literature to explore the overall human condition. Critics also disagree with classifying writers on the basis of their race, as they believe this is limiting and artists can tackle any subject.

Proponents counter that the exploration of group and ethnic dynamics through writing deepens human understanding and previously, entire groups of people were ignored or neglected by American literature. The general consensus view appears to be that American literature is not breaking apart because of new genres such as African-American literature. Instead, American literature is simply reflecting the increasing diversity of the United States and showing more signs of diversity than before in its history Andrews, ; McKay, Some of the criticism of African-American literature over the years has come from within the community; some argue that black literature sometimes does not portray black people in a positive light and that it should.

We insist that our Art and Propaganda be one. Du Bois's belief in the propaganda value of art showed when he clashed in with the author Claude McKay over his best-selling novel Home to Harlem. Du Bois thought the novel's frank depictions of sexuality and the nightlife in Harlem appealed only to the "prurient demand[s]" of white readers and publishers looking for portrayals of Black "licentiousness.

Addressing prejudice between lighter-skinned and darker-skinned Blacks, the novel infuriated many African Americans, who did not like the public airing of their "dirty laundry. Many African-American writers thought their literature should present the full truth about life and people. He wrote that Black artists intended to express themselves freely no matter what the Black public or white public thought.

More recently, some critics accused Alice Walker of unfairly attacking black men in her novel The Color Purple Honoring the Difficult There's good literature and bad. In order to substantiate this claim, he cites both the societal pressures to create a distinctly black American literature for uplift and the lack of a well formulated essential notion of literary blackness.

For this scholar, the late 19th and early 20th centuries de jure racism crystallized the canon of African-American literature as black writers conscripted literature as a means to counter notions of inferiority. In an alternative reading, Karla F.

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