A study of the aesthetic relationship between Langston Hughes´and Amiri Baraka´s plays

• Grant number: 12/21362-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: August 01, 2013
• End date: January 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Modern Foreign Literatures
• Principal Investigator: Maria Sílvia Betti
• Grantee: Gerson Vieira Camelo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study aims to investigate the aesthetic relationship between the dramatic works by the black North American playwrights Langston Hughes (19021967) and Amiri Baraka (1934 ) as concerns their theatrical and political conceptions. Two plays by each of these playwrights have been chosen for this purpose: Mulatto (1935) and Don´t you want to be free?(1938), by Langston Hughes, and The Toilet (1964) and The Slave (1964) by Amiri Baraka. The aims of the comparative analysis proposed are 1) to find formal elements present in the works of Hughes that can also be found in the works by Baraka, and 2) to examine how Baraka transforms them into elements of a political struggle against the white elite, responsible for the oppression of the blacks and the of poorest segments of the U.S. population. We believe the formal advances as well as the political conceptions in Hughes's plays have been aesthetically appropriated into Baraka's artistic production. Our hypothesis is that the Aesthetics of Jazz and Blues, an open form that implies both aesthetic advances and retreats without formal impairment, provides the link for the formal relationship between the works by the two playwrights.