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Karyn L. Hixson
Ph.D. Fellow,
University of Texas, San Antonio |
Analogous Indirect Messages of Opportunity:
Claude McKay’s Outcry Adjoining Countee Cullen’s Inquiry
Claude McKay’s Outcry Adjoining Countee Cullen’s Inquiry
This talk responds to the need of academic scholarship to understand the relationship between the Harlem Renaissance writers and their use of the sonnet form. The nature of that struggle is embodied in the sonnet’s effective articulation of the experience of racism via the genre question and answer format, most notable by the standard quatrain/sestet layout.
This talk also responds to the need for understanding the exchange between form (content) and critique of protest poetry within the traditional sonnet format. My discussion will demonstrate that the sonnet served as an effective genre to voice protest poetry by Harlem Renaissance writers who were experiencing “double-consciousness,” the concept made popular by W.E.B. Dubois that delves into a sense of two selves resulting from being both African and American. Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks utilized this contemplative structure for its formal, classical, and accepted style to show how African Americans think about their hardships, but in a way tolerable that resonated with or appealed to whites.
The inherent fundamental dialectical structure found in the genre provides an ideal format for the logical discussion of ideas and opinions. The sonnet’s self-reflective structure has been adopted by poets McKay, Cullen, and Brooks in the early 1900s. These are not the only African American poets to express their political views in this form, but this study will examine these writers as exemplary practitioners. To highlight their use of the traditional genre is a convenient way to give focus to a process and join the conversation concerning racial equality using the traditional sonnet form in order to address ongoing questions about civil rights that have been pondered for hundreds of years.
This talk also responds to the need for understanding the exchange between form (content) and critique of protest poetry within the traditional sonnet format. My discussion will demonstrate that the sonnet served as an effective genre to voice protest poetry by Harlem Renaissance writers who were experiencing “double-consciousness,” the concept made popular by W.E.B. Dubois that delves into a sense of two selves resulting from being both African and American. Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Gwendolyn Brooks utilized this contemplative structure for its formal, classical, and accepted style to show how African Americans think about their hardships, but in a way tolerable that resonated with or appealed to whites.
The inherent fundamental dialectical structure found in the genre provides an ideal format for the logical discussion of ideas and opinions. The sonnet’s self-reflective structure has been adopted by poets McKay, Cullen, and Brooks in the early 1900s. These are not the only African American poets to express their political views in this form, but this study will examine these writers as exemplary practitioners. To highlight their use of the traditional genre is a convenient way to give focus to a process and join the conversation concerning racial equality using the traditional sonnet form in order to address ongoing questions about civil rights that have been pondered for hundreds of years.
Karyn L Hixson is a second year PhD fellow currently studying life writing, African American Literature, and composition focusing on anti-racist pedagogy. She has several publications and has participated in conferences nationally and internationally. Her master’s thesis ignited her interest in the sonnet which centered on the choice of genre by Harlem Renaissance writers.