Political aspects in 'The New Negro' (PDF)

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,00, University of Bamberg (Fakultät Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaften), course: Tales of the Jazz Age, 7 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The “Roaring Twenties” – a chapter of history which burst out with the extremes: On the one hand fascinating improvements in daily life, stunning inventions, new ideas about social systems – and on the other hand still a very strong racism, the widespread feeling of being lost and the beginning of the isolationism as a political solution to the problems of the world. New York was one of the strongholds of the movement, with especially the Harlem Renaissance, the movement of black art and culture taking place. But the movement was not only an eruption of artistic thoughts and works, but had also a political imagination. Due to the vast amount of literature, paintings and other works, I am going to
focus only on “The New Negro”, edited by Alain Locke. This book “had the effects
of a manifesto” and so is an acceptable basis for the search for the political face
of the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement – two items which can
easily be exchanged. Although it would be very interesting to go through The
New Negro piece by piece and try to find political aspects of the single parts, due
to the limited space of this Hausarbeit that must be left to future attempts. This
limitation is further explained later on.
A very interesting study has been done by Robert E. Washington in The
Ideologies of African American Literature, which is dealing with the political
aspect of African American literature and not only the Harlem Renaissance.
The central question of this Hausarbeit searches for political aspects of the
Harlem Renaissance at the example of The New Negro.