Paul Laurence Dunbar

“A Negro Love Song”

a)      Why is this called “Negro” love song?  Love poetry tradition—ancient.   Use of dialect—why use it?  It is written for speakers of the dialect in which it is written? No!  He’s trying to celebrate, make his elite audience (black and white, world) aware of the “poetry” of the common person.  This is similar to the European Romantic Movement that emphasized the “the language of ordinary men” as poetic (Wordsworth).   Move away from artificiality in verse—toward real images, real emotions. 

b)      Compare to Christopher Marlowe love poem (below)

a.       Diction is less formal, “literary”, artificial

b.      Would a real shepherd write poetry like this?   Pastoral tradition shepherd persona of the lover/swain  (is a real shepherd going to have gold, ivory, etc.)

c.       How does Dunbar’s poem echo the pastoral tradition?  What images or words?  Mockingbird, pine (Southern language/location); both have eroticism (waist, taste)—“jump back, honey, jump back”—nonsense but also suggests sex

d.      Classicists—these writers were trying to create poetry/lit. along the lines the classical models (Greek, Roman, English) but at the same time make them up to date and fit the “negro” culture: African American culture has the same depth and breadth of classic culture  (WEB DuBois’ “talented tenth”—top ten % which leads a culture) validation of black culture

“Sympathy”

a)      How does this poem differ from “A Negro Love Song”?  No dialect, written in Standard (archaic) English—“opes” instead of opens)—using “poetic diction” of traditional English poetry.  Is this poem about race? Yes (universalizes the sorrow of living in a racist society to any situation where one lacks freedom); pastoral imagery (slopes, grass, glass, buds) ironic or jarring (nature should be at peace, harmony, but instead we have this unnatural “cage”)  

b)      What is the cage?  Mental slavery, yellow wall paper brainwashing   Why is the bird beating his wings on the cruel bars? Why can’t he just be happy?  It’s unnatural.  Dunbar is saying racism/segregation is unnatural.  Self-inflicted wound/self-mutilation: one of the ultimate horrors of racism/segregation is the destruction of the self

c)       Why does he “fling” his song to Heaven?  Hopelessness

d)      Why this title?  Why not “The Caged Bird”  It’s asking for the reader’s sympathy, the idea of sympathy in general, is there sympathy at all—from God? 

“We Wear the Mask”

And mouth with myriad subtleties.  (say in many different subtle ways that avoid the obvious)

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
          We wear the mask.             (Why should the world see our vulnerability, we wear in defense, defiance—our one method of revolution)

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.   (Sympathy: do you hear us, Lord?)
We sing, but oh the clay is vile   (the body is debased, not spiritual)
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
          We wear the mask!       (why the exclamation point?  Even in passiveness this is an act of aggression?)

What is the mask?  Veil?  Must hide your real self, emotions, identity, you must play a social role instead of freely who you are—blackface characters

Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima as mask characters used to sell products (why does America want to buy these images)

a)      If you buy this product you are upper-class (have servants)

b)      Race relations are just fine (blacks are happy serving whites)

c)      Blacks are sexless, helpful, subservient, useful

a)