Defense Date

3-27-2026

Graduation Date

Spring 5-8-2026

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

English

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Kathy Glass

Committee Member

Faith Barrett

Committee Member

Linda Kinnahan

Keywords

poetry, modernism, Harlem Renaissance, African American, literature

Abstract

This dissertation explores poetry written at the turn of the twentieth century in order to closely examine what I call the “Black Romantic” impulse of the Harlem and New Negro Renaissances. I argue that Black American poets turned to a Romantic notion of the poet as cultural representative and of poetry as a radical celebration of beauty that disavowed and disputed social ills, namely racist ideologies in America, while simultaneously demanding the right of Black pleasure-taking. However, I also contend that Black American poets of various backgrounds and identities used different poetic, rhetorical, and artistic strategies to elevate the status of Beauty and the Aesthetic in their poetry, and, in a parallel fashion, to address the social issues of the time using the vehicle of poetics and aesthetics.

In Part One, I discuss constructions of poetry, poetics, and poets in the prose and verse of male New Negro poets that appeared in The Crisis, culminating in two case studies, of William Stanley Braithwaite and James D. Corrothers, respectively. The Introduction to Part One concerns primarily what I call the “Embattled Bard” persona so common to Black male poets at the turn of the century, particularly the iteration of this persona found in poetry published in The Crisis. This persona essayed an earnest attempt at distilling the Black struggle for aesthetic creation and pleasure in poetry. In focusing on periodical publishing, I train my attention on the public personae, positions, and discourses on poetry taken up by writers, considering how they construct poetry as a shared resource among a literate public of Black Americans. Chapters One and Two of Part One concern the specific Embattled Bard personae found in the poetry of William Stanley Braithwaite and James D. Corrothers, considering how periodical and book publishing offered different avenues for the exploration of the Embattled Bard persona. Ultimately, I conclude that, while this persona served the ends of curating aesthetic expression and combatting racist representations of Black Americans, it did so while furthering bourgeois and patriarchal ideas of leadership, aesthetics, and poetry.

Part Two concerns more ironic and complex visions of Black Romanticism, its possibilities for building Black community, and its opportunities for Black pleasure-taking. In this Part, I argue that an alternative strand of Black Romanticism focused more on community building than self-fashioning appeared alongside Black bardic poetry in the poetic oeuvres of other Black American poets. This Part also considers the political and aesthetic possibilities of universalist language. This Part culminates in two author-focused studies, one concerning Fenton Johnson and one concerning Georgia Douglas Johnson, that examine alternatives to the masculinist, bourgeois persona of the Embattled Bard I investigate in Part One.

Finally, by way of a conclusion, the Epilogue to this dissertation concerns the poetry that appeared in the short-lived Harlem Renaissance journal FIRE!!. In this brief concluding piece, I analyze the poetry that appeared in this journal to argue that FIRE!! builds on the Black Romantic and pastoral tradition I examine throughout my dissertation, carrying on this tradition into the Harlem Renaissance at its most experimental and modern. As such, I contend that the Black Romantic tradition I have concerned myself with across this dissertation provides insight into the poetic and rhetorical strategies of the Harlem Renaissance in order to provoke further study of this tradition.

Language

English

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