Cane

Question 1

What was Toomer’s introduction to the Spirituals and how did he react to them?

Answer 1

• In “the Cane years” Toomer wrote ‘A family of back country Negroes had only recently moved into a shack not too far away. They sang. And this was the first time I’d ever heard the folk-songs and spirituals. They were very rich and sad and joyous and beautiful.’
• In this description, Toomer suggests something of a beauty and poignancy of landscape, a people, an art form in transition, one he would render in a loving and experiemental form

Question 2

Which two movements was Toomer associated with?

Answer 2

• Lost generation/ New Critics (associated with high American modernism)
• the New Negro/ Harlem Renaissance

Question 3

Toomer’s views of race and who can this be linked to?

Answer 3

• he was very ambivalent towards his race, in The he defined himself as ‘American, neither black nor white, rejecting these divisions, accepting all people as people’
• this echoes Jose Vasconcelos’ notion in La Raza cosmic, that there is a new, superior human race which is the product of complete racial mixing> he believe the hispanic people to be this.

Question 4

What did mix race people represent for Toomer?

What text can this idea be related to?

Answer 4

• For Toomer, a mixed race person is a pivotal figure, a metaphor of a hybrid culture and a fusion of many ethnic and genetic strands.
• The mixed race person embodied a rejection fo racial purity, and symbolised racial unity, - a symbol of cosmic unity rather than the source of
• Good Morning Midnight,, Sasha as a supra-national figure, a citizen of all and every country

Question 5

How do Toomer’s view on mixed-race identity filter into his poetics?

Answer 5

• The form of Cane, which is the compostite of poetry, prose, drama, art, modernity, tradition.
• this Super, cosmic form, is like the new super race

Question 6

Two main theories about race/ racial difference at the time

Answer 6

1. Most Americans understood racial differences in terms of biology, thought that the world was composed of several different and distinct races, each with its own history and place in a hierarchy

2 Du Bois installe

Question 7

Du Bois’ view on race

Answer 7

• In ‘The conservation of races’ (an early text of his) he regards race as being biologically determined but non hierachialical, he celebrates the role of ‘the negro’ and the artistic, philosophical and ethical contorbutions they have made.
• Later in his career, he rejects this view as incorrect, and asserts that race is socially constructed.

Question 8

Key historical dates in the run up to the Harlem Renaissance (1863-1920)

Answer 8

• Reconstruction Era (1863-1877): sought to rebuild racial relations and reintegrate black people into the US.
• Great Migration

Question 9

What was the impact of reconstruction?

Answer 9

• Rise in black resentment/ jealousy amongst the white population
• formation of the KKK
• The failure of Reconstruction led to the Great Migration: Black people moving North to avoid racial discrimination- they only faced a different

Question 10

Difference between Toomer and Du Bois’ view of fragmentation

Answer 10

• Du Bois famously redefined the notion of ‘double consciousness’ as a metaphor for the Negro’s duality caused by racial segregation
• For Du Bois this duality/ twoness represented a malady which could only be cured by the end of segregation
• For Toomer, fragmentation or duality os the very condition of modernity, it cannot be ‘cured’ any more than the gap between the conscious and unconscious mind can be lessened.

Question 11

Relationship between Blackness and Modernity for Cane (fragmentation)

Answer 11

• Toomer saw as his great theme the fragmentation and alienation at the core of modern life/ existence
• Rather than see this as an essentially ‘human’ condition which black people must learn to fit their blackness into, he saw this as an essentially black condition, which humanity had to adjust to in order to fit in the modern world.

Question 12

Quote about modernity, blackness and fragmentation

Answer 12

Cane is perhaps the first work of fiction by a black writer to take th historical experiences and social conditions of the Negro, and make them the metaphor for the humann condition, in this case, the metaphor for modernity itself

Question 13

Key formatting choices which are quite central to the edition?

Answer 13

• Toomer often uses three full stops to indicate a pause, as opposed to an ellipsis
• Toomer often uses fails to apostrophise words e.g. can’t becomes cant - this could reflect a modernity/ an avant garde