The Political Plays of Langston Hughes PDF Download

Are you looking for read ebook online? Search for your book and save it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Download The Political Plays of Langston Hughes PDF full book. Access full book title The Political Plays of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes. Download full books in PDF and EPUB format.

The Political Plays of Langston Hughes

The Political Plays of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809322961
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Among the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is perhaps best remembered for the innovative use of jazz rhythms in his writing. While his poetry and essays received much public acclaim and scholarly attention, Hughes' dramas are relatively unknown. Only five of the sixty-three plays Hughes scripted alone or collaboratively have been published (in 1963). Published here, for the first time, are four of Hughes' most poignant, poetic, and political dramas, Scottsboro Limited, Harvest (also known as Blood on the Fields), Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer. Each play reflects Hughes' remarkable professionalism as a playwright as well as his desire to dramatize the social history of the African American experience, especially in the context of the labor movements of the 1930s and their attempts to attract African American workers. Hughes himself counted prominent members of these leftist groups among his close friends and patrons; he formed a theater group with Whittaker Chambers, prompting an FBI investigation of Hughes and his writing in the 1930s. These plays, while easily read as idealistic propaganda pieces for the left, are nonetheless reflective of Hughes' other more influential and studied works. The first scholar to offer a systematic study of Hughes' plays, Susan Duffy provides an informed introduction as well as a detailed analysis of each of the four plays. Each chapter begins with locating the play at a moment in the social history of the 1930s. Then Duffy analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed throughout the script, focusing on the political ideologies attacked as well as the ideologies endorsed. Duffy also establishes that De Organizer,a collaboration with noted jazz pianist and composer James P. Johnson (who also wrote its score) was indeed performed by the Labor Stage. Throughout the analysis of Scottsboro Limited, Harvest, Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer, Duffy returns to the questions of Hughes' motives for writing these works: Were they merely didactic plays attempting to please Hughes' leftist patrons or heartfelt leftist political propaganda? By making these forgotten texts available, and by presenting them within a scholarly discussion of 1930s leftist political movements, Duffy seeks to spark a renewed interest in Langston Hughes as an American playwright and political figure.

The Political Plays of Langston Hughes

The Political Plays of Langston Hughes PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809322961
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
Among the most influential poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes is perhaps best remembered for the innovative use of jazz rhythms in his writing. While his poetry and essays received much public acclaim and scholarly attention, Hughes' dramas are relatively unknown. Only five of the sixty-three plays Hughes scripted alone or collaboratively have been published (in 1963). Published here, for the first time, are four of Hughes' most poignant, poetic, and political dramas, Scottsboro Limited, Harvest (also known as Blood on the Fields), Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer. Each play reflects Hughes' remarkable professionalism as a playwright as well as his desire to dramatize the social history of the African American experience, especially in the context of the labor movements of the 1930s and their attempts to attract African American workers. Hughes himself counted prominent members of these leftist groups among his close friends and patrons; he formed a theater group with Whittaker Chambers, prompting an FBI investigation of Hughes and his writing in the 1930s. These plays, while easily read as idealistic propaganda pieces for the left, are nonetheless reflective of Hughes' other more influential and studied works. The first scholar to offer a systematic study of Hughes' plays, Susan Duffy provides an informed introduction as well as a detailed analysis of each of the four plays. Each chapter begins with locating the play at a moment in the social history of the 1930s. Then Duffy analyzes the rhetorical strategies employed throughout the script, focusing on the political ideologies attacked as well as the ideologies endorsed. Duffy also establishes that De Organizer,a collaboration with noted jazz pianist and composer James P. Johnson (who also wrote its score) was indeed performed by the Labor Stage. Throughout the analysis of Scottsboro Limited, Harvest, Angelo Herndon Jones, and De Organizer, Duffy returns to the questions of Hughes' motives for writing these works: Were they merely didactic plays attempting to please Hughes' leftist patrons or heartfelt leftist political propaganda? By making these forgotten texts available, and by presenting them within a scholarly discussion of 1930s leftist political movements, Duffy seeks to spark a renewed interest in Langston Hughes as an American playwright and political figure.

Political Stages

Political Stages PDF Author: Emily Mann
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1476847762
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 632

Book Description
Warning: The plays of ÊPolitical StagesÊ do not make for a quiet evening of theatre. These are the plays which got audiences out of their seats and sometimes out into the streets. Their words and ideas rumbled ominously down the marble hallways of legislatures and challenged even threatened and often changed the thinking of millions. These are the plays which either lit or reflected the fires of those political controversies which blazed across the American Twentieth Century. Individually each is a molotov cocktail tossed onto the stage each a political movement encapsulated in dramatic form. Combined they constitute both a conflagration and a record of American political and theatrical ideology. Never before however have they been collected in one explosive volume. In ÊPolitical StagesÊ they have at last been preserved ever ready to serve at the barricades of subsequent eras. Includes works by Tennessee Williams Emily Mann Clifford Odets Langston Hughes and others.

The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought

The Oxford Encyclopedia of African Thought PDF Author: Abiola Irele
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195334736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1025

Book Description
From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.

Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940

Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940 PDF Author: James Vernon Hatch
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814325803
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Book Description
The topics of the plays cover the realm of the human experience in styles as wide-ranging as poetry, farce, comedy, tragedy, social realism, and romance. Individual introductions to each play provide essential biographical background on the playwrights.

Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1930s

Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1930s PDF Author: Anne Fletcher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350153591
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Book Description
The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their works to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing! (1935) and Golden Boy (1937); * Lillian Hellman: The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), and Days to Come (1936); * Langston Hughes: Mulatto (1935), Mule Bone (1930, with Zora Neale Hurston) and Little Ham (1936); * Gertrude Stein: Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938), Four Saints in Three Acts (written in 1927, published in 1932) and Listen to Me (1936).

American Political Humor [2 volumes]

American Political Humor [2 volumes] PDF Author: Jody C. Baumgartner
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 809

Book Description
This two-volume set surveys the profound impact of political humor and satire on American culture and politics over the years, paying special attention to the explosion of political humor in today's wide-ranging and turbulent media environment. Historically, there has been a tendency to regard political satire and humor as a sideshow to the wider world of American politics—entertaining and sometimes insightful, but ultimately only of modest interest to students and others surveying the trajectory of American politics and culture. This set documents just how mistaken that assumption is. By examining political humor and satire throughout US history, these volumes not only illustrate how expressions of political satire and humor reflect changes in American attitudes about presidents, parties, and issues but also how satirists, comedians, cartoonists, and filmmakers have helped to shape popular attitudes about landmark historical events, major American institutions and movements, and the nation's political leaders and cultural giants. Finally, this work examines how today's brand of political humor may be more influential than ever before in shaping American attitudes about the nation in which we live.

The Facts on File Companion to American Drama

The Facts on File Companion to American Drama PDF Author: Jackson R. Bryer
Publisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438129661
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 657

Book Description
Features a comprehensive guide to American dramatic literature, from its origins in the early days of the nation to the groundbreaking works of today's best writers.

The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes

The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes PDF Author: R Miller
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813183030
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191

Book Description
Langston Hughes was one of the most important American writers of his generation, and one of the most versatile, producing poetry, fiction, drama, and autobiography. In this innovative study, R. Baxter Miller explores Hughes's life and art to enlarge our appreciation of his contribution to American letters. Arguing that readers often miss the complexity of Hughes's work because of its seeming accessibility, Miller begins with a discussion of the writer's auto-biography, an important yet hitherto neglected key to his imagination. Moving on to consider the subtle resonances of his life in the varied genres over which his imagination "wandered," Miller finds a constant symbiotic bond between the historical and the lyrical. The range of Hughes's artistic vision is revealed in his depiction of Black women, his political stance, his lyric and tragi-comic modes. This is one of the first studies to apply recent methods of literary analysis, including formalist, structuralist, and semiotic criticism, to the work of a Black American writer. Miller not only affirms in Hughes's work the peculiar qualities of Black American culture but provides a unifying conception of his art and identifies the primary metaphors lying at its heart. Here is a fresh and coherent reading of the work of one of the twentieth century's greatest voices, a reinterpretation that renews our appreciation not only of Black American text and heritage but of the literary imagination itself.

Not Without Laughter

Not Without Laughter PDF Author: Langston Hughes
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486113906
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Poet Langston Hughes' only novel, a coming-of-age tale that unfolds amid an African American family in rural Kansas, explores the dilemmas of life in a racially divided society.

Theorizing Black Theatre

Theorizing Black Theatre PDF Author: Henry D. Miller
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786460148
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
The rich history of African-American theatre has often been overlooked, both in theoretical discourse and in practice. This volume seeks a critical engagement with black theatre artists and theorists of the twentieth century. It reveals a comprehensive view of the Art or Propaganda debate that dominated twentieth century African-American dramatic theory. Among others, this text addresses the writings of Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy, Sidney Poitier, and August Wilson. Of particular note is the manner in which black theory collides or intersects with canonical theorists, including Aristotle, Keats, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Shaw, and O'Neill.