A Reflector Of Afro-American Culture

As the soul of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is regarded as the most important black artist in the Afro-American literary history. Harlem Renaissance is an important cultural and intellectual movement in the Afro-American history, which helps the Afro-Americans step out of the marginalized status under the cultural hegemony policy. With the contributions of the Afro-American artists, the mainstream culture is afforded an opportunity for the existence of the black culture. Being the spokesman of the black masses, Langston Hughes had boundless connection with the Harlem Renaissance. Focusing on his two poetry volumes written in the Harlem Renaissance, namely The Weary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), the present thesis briefly analyses Hughes' great contributions to black poetry and black aesthetics.Therefore, the thesis contains six parts: introduction briefly discusses Hughes' poems and his black aesthetics in Harlem Renaissance, thus providing us with a better opportunity to analyse his poems in the ensuing chapters. Chapter One mainly focuses on the great black intellectual movement-the Harlem Renaissance, and then briefly introduces Hughes' black aesthetics founded under the influence of W. E. B. DuBois. Chapter Two is a discussion of Hughes' change from racial romanticism to realism. In combination with his poems, the next two chapters make a detailed analysis of Hughes' two greatest contributions to the black literature, namely, his dialect poems and his blues poems. By introducing black dialect and blues into poetry writing, Hughes fully expresses his aesthetics of implanting the black culture into American culture with dignity. His poetry is the first fruit of his "Negro poetry form" and is remembered as the monumental works of the whole American culture.In the conclusion I emphasize Hughes' influences on theAfro-American culture as well as on the American culture. With Negritude, the unique characteristics of the Afro-Americans, Hughes' poems are seen as a forceful weapon to fight against cultural hegemony. With his poems Hughes proves himself as one of the most influential Afro-American poets.