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ENG 175
WEEK 4
Characterization and The Harlem Renaissance
Slide
Number
Slide Heading
Slide 1
Introduction
Slide 2
Historical
Context for The
Harlem
Renaissance
Script
(please remember to copy and paste the information from this
column into the notes pages of ppt)
Welcome to Week 4. In this week’s session, we explore
literary aspects of a major chapter in modern American
history called The Harlem Renaissance. I’ve also supplied a
reading. It is an excerpt from a chapter of a non-fiction book
that depicts the fascinating achievements generated by writers
and artists who lived during this era. This supplemental
reading provides you with a number of dates and identities of
artists associated with The Harlem Renaissance. We also look
into the fiction of the phenomenal short story writer and
novelist, Zora Neale Hurston, whose work was very
prominent during The Harlem Renaissance and for a number
of years afterward.
The Harlem Renaissance, according to its writers and
scholars of the time, was both a reaction to and rebirth of
society, politics, art, music, and literature of that time period,
which ranged from 1900 – or the earliest part of the 20th
century – to the mid-to-late 1930s. It was a movement. It
became a powerful movement and a kind of call-to-arms of
black scholars, artists, writers, and musicians. The Harlem
Renaissance, as a movement, truly began as a result of the
“Great Migration” in the 1920s of African Americans who
migrated from the south to places like New York City,
Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. The movement
addressed individuals’ problems with prejudice and shadowy
freedom. Much of the prejudicial trends during those years
were coming from decisions made by the federal government,
which limited and harnessed the freedom of minorities, and
especially African-Americans. The “rebirth” spurred the
breaking of new ground in music, literature, and art. The
movement advanced the influential fiction and poetry of
writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Wallace
Thurman, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, and Claude
McKay.
Slide 3
The Harlem
Renaissance
(continued)
The movement spawned incredible music, art, and literature
from African-American musicians, writers, artists, and
intellectuals, most of whom resided in or near New York City.
The Harlem Renaissance, centered in Manhattan, New York
City, captured international as well as national attention for its
magnificent explosion of artistic production. Black writers
living as far away as the Caribbean and Europe were deeply
influenced by the movement. Although it was a short-lived
movement – cut short by the financial stock market crash of
1929 and the subsequent years of the Great Depression – the
output of its artists and writers has survived for generations,
and it still is regarded today as the single-most critical
concentration of transcendent artwork created by AfricanAmerican artists in a specific time period.
Slide 4
The Fiction of
Zora Neale
Hurston
Born in central Florida in 1903, Zora Neale Hurston, early in
her career, was a trained anthropologist. Some of her fiction
was based on the folklore of the African American community
in the deep South. She was a consummate fiction writer,
churning out stories that ironically received greater acclaim
after The Harlem Renaissance ended.
She did write and publish stories during The Harlem
Renaissance; however, a majority of her work was published
just after the movement. During the movement, she worked
with poet Langston Hughes and others editing and producing
a literary journal called Fire!while writing during that time,
too. Among her many books, her most well-known book is
Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937.
Slide 5
The Fiction of
Zora Neale
Hurston
(continued)
Hurston is considered one of the most important literary
voices of The Harlem Renaissance. Her fiction was
celebrated, but more so just after the movement ended at the
time of the Great Depression. Her narrative “voice” – or style
– combined raw poetic language rich with imagery and raw
language dependent on regional, deep South colloquialism.
Most of her stories used rural settings and rural folks such as
farmhands or blue-collar, African-American workers to
portray themes of fidelity and forgiveness, and struggles with
self-identity when facing harmful human conditions. There is
the propensity for violence in her stories stemming from
problematic choices her male characters especially make.
Her fiction emphasized moral dilemmas in which her
characters had to make difficult choices.
Slide 6
The Fiction of
Zora Neale
Hurston
(continued)
Slide 7
Summary
Hurston’s characters were usually based on real people with
whom she came into contact while living in the south,
especially in Eatonville, Florida. They are blue-collar and
poor and they exhibit severe inner-conflicts. Some of her
characters are wild-living, desperate, and yearning for a better,
more fulfilling life. Her characters illuminated the suffering
and perseverance of blacks. Take the wife Delia in her story,
“Sweat.” Delia feels trapped and controlled in her marriage.
Toward the end of the story, as things culminate in a violent
scenario, Delia makes a choice that will possibly lead to her
independence from abuse and brutality. As a writer, Hurston’s
“voice” – a blend of the poetic and a rough-hewn dialect –
was considered brilliantly original and provocative.
This concludes this lesson for Week 4.
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