EMAIL<\/a> | SYLLABUS<\/a> | POLICIES<\/a> | QUESTIONS<\/a> | PRESENTATIONS<\/a> | JOURNALS<\/a> | PAPER<\/a> | EXAM<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: see Journals page for details on keeping your journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assigned: Hughes, Langston. From \u201cThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain\u201d (Norton Vol. D 348-50); All Poems (Vol. D 871-80): \u201cThe Negro Speaks of Rivers\u201d (Vol. D 871); \u201cMother to Son\u201d (Vol. D 871-72); \u201cI, Too\u201d (Vol. D 872); \u201cThe Weary Blues\u201d (Vol. D 872-73); \u201cMulatto\u201d (Vol. D 873-74); \u201cSong for a Dark Girl\u201d (Vol. D 874-75); \u201cGenius Child\u201d (Vol. D 875); \u201cVisitors to the Black Belt\u201d (Vol. D 875-76); \u201cNote on Commercial Theatre\u201d (Vol. D 876); \u201cVagabonds\u201d (Vol. D 876-77); \u201cWords Like Freedom\u201d (Vol. D 877); \u201cMadam and Her Madam\u201d (Vol. D 877-78); \u201cFreedom {1}\u201d (Vol. D 878); \u201cMadam\u2019s Calling Cards\u201d (Vol. D 878-79); \u201cSilhouette\u201d (Vol. D 879); \u201cTheme for English B\u201d (Vol. D 880).<\/p>\n\n\n\n From \u201cThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain\u201d (Norton Vol. D 348-50)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. In \u201cThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,\u201d what basic argument does Langston Hughes advance regarding the development of African-American art in the United States? How is jazz central to his argument? That is, what qualities does jazz possess that supposedly make it ideal as a vehicle for a genuinely \u201cblack\u201d mode of expression?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Negro Speaks of Rivers\u201d (Vol. D 871)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Who is the \u201cI\u201d that speaks in \u201cThe Negro Speaks of Rivers\u201d? The Rivers the rivers in this poem are obviously charged with symbolic meaning in that they reference historical experience and the flow of time. But what more specific connotations can be found in some of the eight or so references to rivers? For example, the Euphrates, the Congo, or the Mississippi that carried Abraham Lincoln to New Orleans?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMother to Son\u201d (Vol. D 871-72)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. What is the most important piece of advice that the mother in \u201cMother to Son\u201d imparts to her son? What should we make of the \u201ccrystal stair\u201d metaphor that she uses at the beginning and end? Consider, for example, that it could be an allusion to the story of Jacob\u2019s dream about a ladder ascending to heaven, a dream he had while fleeing from his brother Esau. (Genesis<\/em> 28:10-19. How would that kind of allusiveness affect the poem\u2019s meaning?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI, Too\u201d (Vol. D 872)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. The first line of \u201cI, Too\u201d is rather Whitmanesque in its claim to \u201csing America.\u201d What kind of song does the speaker go on to sing, if we are to take the poem\u2019s content as the equivalent of a song? What does the verbal form \u201cam\u201d in the poem\u2019s final line (rather than a repetition of \u201csing\u201d) add to our understanding?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Weary Blues\u201d (Vol. D 872-73)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. In \u201cThe Weary Blues,\u201d how does singing the blues, according to the speaker who heard a black man singing them, affect the singer? How do the lyrics given to us (i.e. the material in quotation marks) compare to the effect described by the speaker throughout the poem and especially towards its conclusion?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMulatto\u201d (Vol. D 873-74)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. In the form of a partial dialog between a mixed-race child and his white father, \u201cMulatto\u201d describes the rape of a black woman by a white man in the South. The italicized words make up the dialog, of course. What\u2019s the substance of that argument, and if there\u2019s a winner, which party is it? Moreover, what about the non-italicized portions of the poem — how do they affect the meaning of the conversation itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSong for a Dark Girl\u201d (Vol. D 874-75) and \u201cSilhouette\u201d (Vol. D 879)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Both \u201cSong for a Dark Girl\u201d and \u201cSilhouette\u201d are poems about the abominable Southern practice of lynching black men for various alleged offenses or violations of a strict racial code. How do these poems, their imagery and perspectives or voices taken together, convey the horror of lynching?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cGenius Child\u201d (Vol. D 875)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. In your view, who is the genius child in \u201cGenius Child\u201d? What attitude does the poem develop with respect to such a child? Why should the song be sung \u201csoftly,\u201d and what might happen if the song were to \u201cget out of hand\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVisitors to the Black Belt\u201d (Vol. D 875-76) and \u201cNote on Commercial Theatre\u201d (Vol. D 876)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. Hughes\u2019 \u201cVisitors to the Black Belt\u201d and \u201cNote on Commercial Theatre\u201d both deal with fundamental matters of identity and authenticity amongst African Americans living in places such as New York City and Chicago. In at least one of these two poems, what is the speaker\u2019s point of contention with white American culture \u2013 how does the speaker deal with the error in perspective that he is calling to account?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cVagabonds\u201d (Vol. D 876-77)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. Hughes\u2019 \u201cVagabonds\u201d is a brief, almost Blakean poem about the desperate plight of America\u2019s poor. One could, of course, easily voice one\u2019s sympathy for impoverished and homeless people in ordinary prose. What does the poetic form of Hughes\u2019 lament add to the critique?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWords Like Freedom\u201d (Vol. D 877) and \u201cFreedom {1}\u201d (Vol. D 878)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. \u201cWords Like Freedom\u201d turns on a distinction between two words — \u201cfreedom\u201d and \u201cliberty\u201d — whose meanings overlap but are not identical. What, then, is the distinction between them and how does that distinction perhaps account for the speaker\u2019s different reaction to the two words? (It may help to recall that the word \u201cliberty\u201d has strong roots in the discourse of the American Revolution: \u201clife, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,\u201d as in the Declaration of Independence.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 12. In \u201cFreedom {1},\u201d Hughes takes issue with the common C19-20 white-culture insistence (an insistence that became quite loud during the 1950s when the modern Civil Rights Movement got underway) that any attempts on the part of African Americans to gain full equality were somehow premature and impatient. How does the poem counter that notion? How does the speaker give the desire for genuine freedom an undeniable urgency?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMadam and Her Madam\u201d (Vol. D 877-78) and \u201cMadam\u2019s Calling Cards\u201d (Vol. D 878-79)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 13. Madam Alberta K. Johnson is one of Langston Hughes\u2019 personae in his poetry. What kind of personality jumps out at us in \u201cMadam and Her Madam\u201d and \u201cMadam\u2019s Calling Cards\u201d? What, that is, animates Alberta? How does she assess her own value and circumstances? (In responding, you might want to have a look at another short Hughes poem, \u201cMadam\u2019s Past History\u201d<\/a><\/strong>, which isn\u2019t in our anthology but offers us a bit of Alberta\u2019s back-story.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTheme for English B\u201d (Vol. D 880)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 14. The speaker in \u201cTheme for English B\u201d is assigned a brief version of what today would be called a personal essay in which he\u2019s supposed to tell the reader something he considers true, something expressive of his own identity. Why does he find that seemingly straightforward one-pager so hard to formulate — wherein, for him, lies the complexity of the task, and how does he resolve the difficulty, if you think he does?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LANGSTON HUGHES QUESTIONS FOR E222 AMERICAN LITERATURECSU FULLERTON, FALL 2014 Note: see Journals page for details on keeping your journal. Assigned: Hughes, Langston. From \u201cThe Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain\u201d (Norton Vol. D 348-50); All Poems (Vol. D 871-80): \u201cThe Negro Speaks of Rivers\u201d (Vol. D 871); \u201cMother to Son\u201d (Vol. D 871-72); \u201cI, Too\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[11],"class_list":["post-794","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4728,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/794\/revisions\/4728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}