Expression of Racial Revolt in Langston Hughes’s Poetry
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Department of English
Abstract
This thesis analyzes the theme of protest in Hughes’s selected poems in
order to explore new horizons in the field of cross-cultural and race studies
linking the Afro-American poetic tradition with its counterpart in Africa. This
thesis argues that the protest poetry of Hughes is a response to the painful
experience of the black people in Africa and the American Diaspora which
transforms blackness into a powerful mechanism of anger and revolt. Dismissing
the policy of systematic interpretive betrayal advocated by those who attempt to
ignore the black experience of agony and pain,Hughes in his poetry recalls
crucial episodes from the black history of struggle against tyranny and racism in
Africa and the United States. Being convinced that black culture survives
through the centuries as an underlying force that threatens to rise to the surface
in protest against oppression and hegemony,Hughes creates counter-poetics to
dismantle narratives which aim to distort history and obscure the sacrifices of the
black people in Africa and the United States during the eras of slavery and
colonization.