THE HARLEM

RENAISSANCE
THE HARLEM
RENAISSANCE
-A flowering of African American
art literature, Music and culture in
the United States led primarily by
the African American community
based in Harlem. New York city
 HISTORY
With the end of the civil war in 1865,
hundreds of thousands of African Americans
newly freed from the yoke of slavery in the
south began to dream of fuller participation
in American society, Including political
empowerment, equal economic opportunity
and economic and cultural self-
determination.
Unfortunately, by the late 1870s that dream was largely dead as white supremacy
was quickly restored to the Reconstruction South. White Lawmakers on state and
local levels passed strict racial segregation laws knows as “Jim Crow laws” that
made African Americans second class citizens.
While a small number of African Americans were able to become landowners, most
were exploited as sharecroppers, a system designed to keep them poor and
powerless.
Hate groups like the ku klux klan (KKK) perpetrated lynchings and conducted
campaigns or terror and intimidation to keep African Americans from voting or
exercising other fundametal rights.
ECONOMY
With booming economies across the North and Midwest offering industrialjobs for workers of every race,
many African Americans realized their hopesfor a better standard of living-and a more racially tolerant
environment-layoutside the South. By the turn of the 20th century, the Great Migration wasunderway as
hundreds of thousands of African Americans relocated to citieslike Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit,
Philadelphia, and New York.

The Harlem section of Manhattan, which covers just three square miles, drewnearly 175,000 African
Americans, giving the neighborhood the largestconcentration of black people in the world. Harlem became
a destination forAfrican Americans of all backgrounds. From unskilled laborers to an educatedmiddle-class,
they shared common experiences of slavery, emancipation, andracial oppression, as well as a
determination to forge a new identity as freepeople
THE GREAT MIGRATION
The Great Migration drew to Harlem some of the greatest minds andbrightest
talents of the day, an astonishing array of African Americanartists and
scholars. Between the end of World War I and themid-1930s, they produced
one of the most significant eras ofcultural expression in the nation's history-
the Harlem Renaissance.

Yet this cultural explosion also occurred in Cleveland, Los Angelesand many
cities shaped by the great migration. Alain Locke, aHarvard-educated writer,
critic, and teacher who became known asthe "dean" of the Harlem
Renaissance, described it as a "spiritualcoming of age" in which African
Americans transformed "socialdisillusionment to race pride."
 LITERATURE
The Harlem Renaissance encompassed
poetry and prose, painting and
sculpture, jazz and swing, opera and
dance.

What united these diverse art forms was

their realistic presentation of what it
meant to be black in America, what
writer Langston Hughes called an
"expression of our individual dark-
skinned selves," as well as a new
militancy in asserting their civil and
political rights
HARLEM RENAIISANCE
CONTRIBUTORS
Among the Renaissance's most significant
contributors wereintellectuals W.E.B. Du Bois,
Marcus Garvey, Cyril Briggs, andWalter Francis
White; electrifying performers JosephineBaker
and Paul Robeson; writers and poets Zora
NealeHurston, Effie Lee Newsome, Countee
Cullen; visual artistsAaron Douglas and Augusta
Savage; and an extraordinary listof legendary
musicians, including Louis Armstrong,
CountBasie, Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke
Ellington, BillieHoliday, Ivie Anderson, Josephine
Baker, Fats Waller, JellyRoll Morton, and
countless others.
 MOVEMENT
At the height of the movement, Harlem was the
epicenter ofAmerican culture. The neighborhood
bustled with AfricanAmerican-owned and run
publishing houses and newspapers,music
companies, playhouses, nightclubs, and cabarets.
Theliterature, music, and fashion they created
defined culture and"cool" for blacks and white alike,
in America and around the world. As the 1920s
came to a close, so dide Harlem Renaissance.
Its.heyday was cut short largely due to the Stock
Market Crash of 1929and resulting Great
Depression, which hurt African American-
ownedbusinesses and publications and made less
financial support forthe arts available from patrons,
foundations, and theatricalorganizations.
 MOVEMENT
However, the Harlem Renaissance's impact on America was indelible. The movement brought
notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future
generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American
life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large,
challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it
radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the
African American 11 experience. Most importantly, the Harlem Renaissance instilled in African
Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination and pride, a new social
consciousness, and a new commitment to political activism, all of which would provide a
foundation for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In doing so, it validated the
beliefs of its founders and leaders like Alain Locke and Langston Hughes that art could be a
vehicle to improve the lives of the African Americans.
 THE THREE THEORIES USED IN DIGESTING LITERARY
PIECES

Text dependent
Author Dependent Theory Readers Dependent Theory
theory
Focuses on the perspective Focuses on the perspective and own
Focuses on the form, interpretation towards the literary text
and the background of the
style and structure of of the reader himself
author
the literary text itself
 CRITICISM
APPROACHES
Literary Criticism - a systematic study and evaluation of
literary works.
Biographical Criticism - begins with simple but central insight
that Literature is written by actual people and that
understanding an author's life can help readers more
thoroughly comprehend the work.
Cultural Criticism- an approach to literature that focuses on
the historical as well as social political and economic contexts
of a work.
Deconstructionism- critical dismantling of tradition and
traditional modes of thought.
Feminist Criticism- an approach to literature that seeks to
correctand supplement what mayregarded as a predominantly
madedominated critical perspective with a feminist consciousness.
Formalist Criticism- an approach to literature that focuses on
theformal elements of a work such as its language, structure and
tone.
Gay and Lesbian- an approach to literature that focuses on
howhomosexuals are represented in literature.
Gender Criticism- an approach to literature that explore how
ideasabout men and women- what is masculine and feminine- can
beregarded as socially constructed by particular cultures.
Historical Criticism - an approach to literature that uses history as means of
understanding literary work more clearly.
Marxist Criticism- an approach to literature that focuses on the ideological
content of work of Karl MarxMythological
Criticism- an approach to literature that seeks to identify what in work creates
deep universal response in readers, bypaying close attention tohopes, fears and
expectations of theentire cultures.
New Criticism- an approach to literature that focuses in explicationextremely
close textual analysis.
New Historicism - an approach to literature that emphasizes the
interaction between the historic context of the work and a modern
reader's understanding and of the work.
Post Colonial Criticism - an approach to literature that focuses on the
study of cultural behavior and expression in relationship to the colonized
word.
Psychological Criticism an approach to literature that draws upon
psychoanalytic theories.
Sociological Criticism - an approach to literature that examines social
groups, relationship and values as they are manifested in literature.
Reader Response Criticism- an approach to literature that focuses on the
reader rather than the work itself.
Structuralism - an approach to literature that examines how literary texts arrive
at their meanings rather than the meaning itself.
Queer Criticism - focused its inquiries into natural and unnatural behavior with
respect to homosexual behavior, queer theory expands its focus to encompass
any kind of sexual activity or identity that falls into normative and deviant
categories.
Moral- Philosophical Criticism - evaluates a work in terms of the ideas and
values it contains - in relation to particular ethical, philosophical or religious
system.
THANK
YOU