Expression of Racial Revolt in Langston Hughes’s Poetry

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.