Title The collage aesthetic in the Harlem Renaissance / Rachel Farebrother

Published Farnham, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, ©2009

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Description 1 online resource (x, 219 pages) : illustrations Contents Boasian anthropology and the Harlem Renaissance -- "[F]lung out in a jagged, uneven but progressive pattern": "culture-citizenship" in The new negro -- "[A]dventuring through the pieces of a still unorganized mosaic": Jean Toomer's collage aesthetic in Cane -- "Think[ing] in hieroglyphics": Zora Neale Hurston's cross-cultural aesthetic -- Reading Zora Neale Hurston's textual synthesis in Jonah's gourd vine and Moses, man of the mountain Summary "Beginning with a subtle and persuasive analysis of the cultural context, Farebrother examines collage in modernist and Harlem Renaissance figurative art and unearths the collage sensibility attendant in Franz Boas's anthropology. This strategy makes explicit the formal choices of Harlem Renaissance writers by examining them in light of African American vernacular culture and early twentieth-century discourses of anthropology, cultural nationalism and international modernism. At the same time, attention to the politics of form in such texts as Toomer's Cane, Locke's The New Negro and selected works by Hurston reveals that the production of analogies, juxtapositions, frictions and distinctions on the page has aesthetic, historical and political implications. Why did these African American writers adopt collage form during the Harlem Renaissance? What did it allow them to articulate? These are among the questions Farebrother poses as she strives for a middle ground between critics who view the Harlem Renaissance as a distinctive, and necessarily subversive, kind of modernism and those who foreground the cooperative nature of interracial creative work during the period. A key feature of her project is her exploration of neglected connections between Euro-American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, a journey she negotiates while never losing sight of the particularity of African American experience. Ambitious and wide-ranging, Rachel Farebrother's book offers us a fresh lens through which to view this crucial moment in American culture."--Jacket Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 195-212) and index Notes Print version record Subject Collage Musikgruppe American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism African American aesthetics. Literature and anthropology -- United States -- History -- 20th century African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 20th century Modernism (Literature) -- United States African Americans in literature. Harlem Renaissance. Harlem Renaissance. African American aesthetics African Americans in literature African Americans -- Intellectual life American literature American literature -- African American authors Harlem Renaissance Literature and anthropology Modernism (Literature) Harlem renaissance Collage Harlem Renaissance -- littérature afro-américaine -- Etats-Unis. Collage. United States Genre/Form Electronic books Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 1351892584 9781351892582 9781315240619 1315240610

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