Date of Award
5-1928
Document Type
Thesis
Keywords
African American Literature, Negro Spirituals, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Harlem Renaissance, W.E.B. Du Bois, Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, William Stanley Braithwaite, Countee Cullen, Literary History
Abstract
This thesis traces the development of the Negro in American literature from its origins in the spirituals through the flowering of the "New Negro" Renaissance of the early twentieth century. Arnaud opens by defining literature as the artistic record of a people's inner life and argues that Negro literary expression developed first through song, tracing the movement from oral spirituals through the early poetry of the enslaved and freed population toward increasingly sophisticated literary forms.
The thesis presents Paul Laurence Dunbar as the foremost early exponent of Negro poetry, examining his biography and his work in both classic English verse and Negro dialect, and considers Charles Waddell Chesnutt's fiction, particularly "The House Behind the Cedars," as a significant advance in the treatment of Negro life in the novel. Arnaud then turns to contemporary figures of the literary renaissance, including William Stanley Braithwaite's lyric poetry and criticism, W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk" and other prose works, James Weldon Johnson's departure from dialect toward classic poetic forms, and the emerging generation of poets including Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Anne Spencer. The thesis concludes that Negro literature, while still developing and often occupied with the race problem, is gaining growing recognition and artistic distinction as an expression of the race's spiritual and intellectual life.
Note: No original abstract was included; this abstract is provided by the XULA Digital Commons editors.
Recommended Citation
Arnaud, A. W., "The Negro in Literature" (1928). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 192.
https://digitalcommons.xula.edu/etd/192
Included in
African American Studies Commons, American Literature Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons