THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE AND THE NEGRITUDE MOVEMENT: LITERARY RELATIONS AND INFLUENCES (NEW YORK CITY)

Historical circumstances indicate that literary relations between the writers of the Harlem Renaissance of those of the Negritude Movement are based upon thematic and stylistic similarities as well as mere literary analogies.;A number of journals, anthologies and persons helped transmit ideas from American blacks to Francophone Africans and West Indians. Claude McKay's novel Banjo in particular had a wide reception among Africans and West Indians in Paris. The poetry of many partisans of the Negritude Movement echoes certain expressions from the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance writers.;Although there are also great similarities between the Haitian writers of the Ecole Indigene and those of the Harlem Renaissance, the Haitians did not know about the existence of the black American movement until after many of them had published their major poetry. The literary relations between these two groups would therefore be characterized as analogies rather than influences.;All available information points to the fact that the writers of the Negritude Movement in France and elsewhere were significantly influenced by the Harlem group of writers.;Anthropological and literary images of Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe give a generally negative image of Africa. The rise of Communism, Dada, Surrealism, the anthropological writings of Leo Frobenius, the discovery of African art by the West, the emergence of jazz as well as the Pan-Africanist ideas and writings of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey made the Francophone Africans and West Indians have a more positive attitude towards themselves and the African continent.