Blues Of The Heart-A Cultural And Literary Study Of Langston Hughes' Blues Poems

New Historicism is one of the most recent critical methods in literary criticism. One of the analytical methods most frequently used by New Historicists is to analyze literature against other genres of arts in order to discover the historical and cultural information contained in a literary work.In light of this method, this thesis analyzes Hughes' blues poems against the national music of black Americans, the blues. It argues that Hughes' use of the blues in his blues poems has a profound historical and cultural basis. On the one hand, the blues contains plenty of cultural information of African Americans. African Americans played a crucial role in its emergence, development and its maturity. Hughes uses this music to create an identity for the black people. On the other hand, the blues craze during and after the Harlem Renaissance influenced a whole generation of black Americans. Many writers tried to use folk materials in their literary writing. Hughes' use of the blues in his poems is influenced by this general atmosphere.This thesis also argues that Hughes' blues poems are deeply influenced by blues lyric forms and blues themes. Many of his blues poems are written in the three common blues lyric forms, namely the AAB form, the ABB form and the AAA form. Among them, the AAB form is his favorite and most frequently used by him. Some of the common themes of the blues are: love, death, North and South, economic predicament. Hughes' blues poems also deal with these themes most frequently.The blues has always been a persisting characteristic in African American Literature. The blues spirit is always there. Hughes picked up this blues tradition and enlarged it. He is the first poet to imitate the forms of the blues in African American Literature. Hughes is the keeper as well as the innovator of the blues tradition. By using the blues in his blues poems, Hughes turns the blues of his heart into blues on the paper.