Analysis Of Significations Of Langston Hughes's Poems

Langston Hughes is an important writer and thinker in the New Negro Movement or Harlem Renaissance as well as a great American black artist in the twentieth century. Hughes lives in the time when the white dominates the American society, blacks stand in the marginal position in the way of politics, economy, and culture. As a representative of black race, Hughes is very concerned about social situations and living conditions of blacks in America, especially the middle and lower-class blacks. Most of his writings come from the life experience of African Americans who stand at the bottom of the society. Most of Hughes's literary creations promote equality, condemn racism and injustice, and celebrate African American culture tradition, humor, and spirituality.Langston Hughes's literary career begins with a commitment to Afro-American traditional vernacular sources as an important basis for his art. The most distinguishing aspect is his incorporation of blues music and black dialect into poetry writing, which inherits and develops the African American vernacular tradition. Hughes's poetic studies by far are often confined to rudimentary description of themes, or introductions to the poetry etc., while the explication of his relation to Afro-American vernacular tradition with black literary theory is comparatively less dealt with. Based on selected poems of Langston Hughes, this work tries to explicate the significations of Hughes's poems so as to reveal the way in which Hughes uses, revises, and reinscribes African-American vernacular tradition.This thesis is divided into four chapters. The Introduction gives an overview of Hughes, his works and literary reviews as well. Chapter 1 briefly introduces Gates' Signifying Theory. Chapter 2 deals with the signification of images in Hughes's poems. The major images discussed in this chapter are religious figures, spiritual places, "dream deferred" and black women. Chapter 3 discusses another signifier blues in Hughes's poems. Blues best represents Afro-American vernacular trait and bears special signification in poetry. This chapter analyzes the signification of blues poems in the way of blues themes and structure. Chapter 4 discusses the signification of black dialect. Black dialect is a special language variation under the racial oppression and culture hegemony. It is an important media for expressing ideas and communication. Black dialect contains abundant social implications. In order to explicate how black dialect conveys the significations, this chapter mainly discusses the Signifying strategies. At length, the thesis points out in the conclusion that the interpretation of meanings of Hughes's poems from the Signifying perspective can deeply reflect how Hughes uses, revises and reinscribes the Afro-American vernacular tradition, and consequently achieve the purpose of reflecting cultural psychology and real social and living situations of African Americans.