Research Question:
HOW DOES YOUR SPECIFIC
AUTHOR HELP DEFINE THE
LITERARY MOVEMENT IN
WHICH S/HE WAS INVOLVED?
Assignment:
To gain a
better
understanding
of a particular
Literary
Movement:
• Think about how your author fits the Literary
Movement of the time. Use the following ideas
as a guide:
• Consider what is interesting and unusual
about this author's life.
• Decide which events in the author's life
affected his/her writing.
• Think about the number and type(s) of books
the author has written.
• Consider the audience(s) of the books this
author writes.
• Has the author won any prizes? What does
that tell you about the book/the author?
• What relationship did the author have with
other authors of the time?
• What kinds of settings appear in the author’s
writing?
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
By Langston Hughes
Where to start? Wikipedia, of course!
y Lived: 1902 – 1967
y Ancestors active in antiy
y
y
y
y
slavery movement
Abandoned by his father
Disjointed, unstable
childhood
Left college due to racism
Travelled the world
extensively
Arnold Rampersad, the
primary biographer of
Hughes
Where to next?
y Print sources – These, like Wikipedia, can often help
you locate related terms.
y Databases –
{
{
Literary Reference Center is the perfect fit for this project
Also try Gale Literary Databases
y Online sources – Yes, there are good sources out
there, but you need to evaluate whether they’re
valuable or not.
Literary Reference Center
y Can browse by authors
{ Name
{ Country
{ Culture
{ Genre
{ Movement
y Can browse by works
{ Title
{ Genre
{ Locale
Searching by movement…
y First: Click on
“Browse
Authors”
y Then click on
“Genre”
y Search for your
Literary
Movement:
“Harlem
Renaissance”
Franks, Carol. "Langston Hughes." Magill’s Survey Of American
Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-7. Literary Reference
Center. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.
y “Langston joined his mother and stepfather, Homer Clark, in
Cleveland, where Clark was then a steelworker. Clark shifted jobs
frequently, and often the family was financially insecure or
impoverished” (Franks).
y “In 1921, when Hughes arrived as a student at Columbia University, he
learned that the school had an unstated policy not to house black
students. Though the university’s authorities reluctantly
assigned Hughes a room, the event set the tone for the one year that
he spent there” (Franks).
y “Hughes, whose writing career spanned more than half a century, was
diverse in his themes, which included connectedness, transitoriness,
racism, integration, poverty, myth, history, and universal freedom.
Particularly unique to his work was his integration of his writing with
blues and jazz. He wrote operettas, and many of his poems were set to
music” (Franks).
Peck, David. "The Life Of Langston Hughes." Magill’s Literary Annual
1989 (1989): 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Feb. 2012.
y
“…Hughes was always struggling to make ends meet: ‘to live by
his writing (as no black had ever done), and to make black
America not only the major raw material of his art but also . . .
his main audience’” (Peck).
y
“…the essence of Hughes’s career as a writer had been from the
start an interplay between art and social conscience, with a need
to defy.’ The artist with a social conscience has never found life
easy in America, and neither would Hughes’” (Peck).
y
“Hughes would be hounded constantly for his radical past. J.
Edgar Hoover denounced the writer in 1944, rightwing groups
would pressure sponsoring organizations to drop his speaking
engagements throughout his career, and his talks were often
disrupted by hecklers or pickets. Investigation by Senator
Joseph McCarthy and the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on
Investigations meant that Hughes’s books would be dropped
from American libraries abroad.” (Peck).
y
“Hughes recognized that much of this harassment occurred
because he was a black writer with a radical past. His radicalism
had never been especially political, but like a great number of
writers with social consciences in the 1930’s, he had often
backed left-wing causes and had always tried to make his art
into a vehicle of social comment.” (Peck)
Patterson, Anita. "Jazz, Realism, and the Modernist Lyric: The Poetry of
Langston Hughes." Modern Language Quarterly 61.4 (2000): 651.
Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.
“…Hughes’s poems challenge the critical distinction between ‘realism’ and
the ‘avant-garde’: even his simplest, most documentary, and most
historically engaged poems evince a characteristically modernist
preoccupation with the figurative implications of form” (Patterson, 652).
Determine YOUR THESIS.
{
{
{
Example thesis statement: Langston Hughes is the epitome of the
Harlem Renaissance literary movement because he used his writing
to express connectedness, racism, integration, poverty, myth, history,
and universal freedom.
Write your presentation to support your thesis statement.
Example:
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On my first slide I will introduce Hughes and my thesis statement.
On the second slide, I will talk about his major works and any awards he
has won.
On the third slide I will talk about the time period in which Hughes lived
and how that influenced his writing.
On the fourth slide I will give quotes about Hughes and his experiences
racism and segregation.
On the fifth slide I will paraphrase other authors talking about how
Hughes lived his life.
On the sixth slide I will quote Hughes’s writing that address themes of the
Harlem Renaissance.
In the conclusion, I will tie this all together and talk about how Hughes is
a perfect example of the Harlem Renaissance Literary Movement.
Don’t plagiarize!
{
Use summaries or paraphrases. Use quotations marks for
direct quotes. Cite ALL sources correctly!
{
Example: In his poem “You and Your Whole Race,” author
Langston Hughes writes, “I dare you to come one step nearer,
evil world, With your hands of greed seeking to touch my
throat” (Hughes) as if to exhort African Americans of the time
to rise up against the injustices they faced in their lives.
Hughes, Langston. "You And Your Whole Race." Poetry 193.4 (2009):
329. Literary Reference Center. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.
MLA Works Cited
Franks, Carol. "Langston Hughes." Magill’s Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition
(2006): 1-7. Literary Reference Center. Web. 16 Feb. 2012.
Hughes, Langston. "You And Your Whole Race." Poetry 193.4 (2009): 329. Literary
Reference Center. Web. 25 Apr. 2013.
Patterson, Anita. "Jazz, Realism, and the Modernist Lyric: The Poetry of Langston Hughes."
Modern Language Quarterly 61.4 (2000): 651. Literary Reference Center. Web.
16 Feb. 2012.
How Do You Create Your Bibliography?
y Use Databases – They do the work for you!
y Use citation creators
{ http://www.bibme.org/
{ http://citationmachine.net
{ http://www.easybib.com/
How Do You Make Sure You Don’t Plagiarize?
y Track Your Sources Carefully!
y Use plagiarism checkers to make sure
{ http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/
{ http://www.plagium.com/
{ http://www.paperrater.com/