The Role of Urban Life in the Poetry of Langston Hughes

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject American Studies - Literature grade: 10 University of Trier course: The Poetry and Poetics of Langston Hughes language: English abstract: Langston Hughes was an urban person. Originally he came from the rather rural Midwest of the United States but he adopted the city as his real home very early in life and remained true to it ever since. In doing so he acted very much in accordance with the zeitgeist of his period which was hugely influenced by the sweeping processes of urbanisation started off earlier by the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism. Living in a big city represented a completely new experience in American and indeed human history. None of the traditional patterns of life could be applied to it without change. Notably it has been impossible up to now to find a valid and comprehensive definition of the phenomenon of the modern city which says a lot about the complexity of the issue.The following essay aims to analyse the way Hughes interpreted the urban phenomenon for his affinity to the city clearly found expression in his poetry. Although he visited countless cities both at home and abroad the overwhelming majority of his urban poems deals with life in the Manhattan district of Harlem which assumed a key role for African Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century and can also be regarded as the centre of Hughes' own life. Viewing Harlem as a microcosm of black urban life and using it as a blueprint in his poetic work he managed to draw a diverse and multi-layered image of existence in the city. Since naturally racial aspects are of particular significance in this context the following analysis will try to examine the various roles played by urban life for African Americans. Thus the essay will focus first on the hopes and expectations they associated with the city as a new environment. It will then examine whether and in what way those hopes were actually refle