A Compound Stylistic Approach to the Racial Conflict in Selected Poems by Langston Hughes

Abstract

The present study seeks to stylistically investigate Langston Hughes's dramatization of the racial conflict between black and white Americans in his best relevant poems. In a twofold self-defense, Hughes and his black American personae counteract the Whites' racial stereotypes through an affirmation of their race-pride that evolves from a deep self-acceptance of their own beauty and ugliness as equal, yet distinct, people within the American nation. The study explores the stylistic patterns employed in the poems to deliver this message. It attempts a compound approach of analysis, presupposing two levels of the conflict: (a) one related to black and white American personae on the enounced level of the poetic text world, and (b) the other pertaining to Hughes, as a black American poet and person, and his readers or critics on the coding level of reality. The proposed analysis examines the interrelationships, if any, between the two levels of the situational orientation, typical of such compound texts as Hughes's dramatic poems.

Examining Foregrounding as a Strategy for Identity Maintenance Through Stylistic Analysis of Afro-American Poetry

“…There was, and there is, a sense of inferiority among the Blacks, which is the reason for the physical, psychological, and social humiliation of Blacks (Ali, 2023). Langston Hughes was born to a poor family, and he led a life of poverty and misery.…”