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Biography
Jean Toomer's greatest contribution to the Harlem Renaissance,
and to American literature in general, was Cane (1922),
an expertly intertwined series of poems, prose sketches,
and a play dealing with African Americans and their connection
with their folk heritage. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised
by his mother and grandfather, Toomer began writing in his
mid-twenties after he had abandoned his quest for a college
degree. His stories and poems appeared in avant-garde journals
like Broom and Prairie as well as the important
African American journals such as the Liberator, Crisis,
and Opportunity. Though a large portion of Cane takes
place in the South, Toomer's only prolonged experience in
there was a four-month stint as superintendent in a black
school in Georgia. Cane's lyricism and its combined
images of rural and urban blacks earned it immediate critical
acclaim, but although Toomer continued to write, he never
again achieved the success of that one distinctive collection.
Explorations
Cane (1923) is a complex book; like Eliot's Waste
Land, it attempts to assemble fragments and memories
into an overview of modern experience. Toomer writes about
African American experience, and southern experience, as
does Hurston -- but the aura
of loneliness and disconnection is distinctly different
and special to Toomer's achievement.
1. Compare the opening of Fern to the opening
of Porter's Flowering Judas or
to that of a story from Anderson's Winesburg,
Ohio. Describe the distinct qualities of Toomer's beginning.
Why open the story with a paragraph as complex as the one
which begins Fern?
2. In this story, as opposed to Porter's or Anderson's,
we have a narrator who is distinct, limited in what he
knows, and a participant in the action. What are the advantages
of telling Fern's story in this way, as opposed to using
omniscient narration? How does the narrative viewpoint
here intensify not just the language in which the story
is told, but the plot itself? Does the story prove to be
ultimately "about" the narrator himself in some way? If
so, how?
Other sites to consult:
http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=72:
A brief biography from the American Academy of poets.
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/toomer/toomer.htm:
A collection of information on Toomer’s life and works
from the Modern American Poetry Web site.
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