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Countee Cullen's Harlem Decadence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2024

Robert Volpicelli
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Abstract

This essay responds to Countee Cullen's reputation within Harlem Renaissance studies as an out-of-date poet who had little concern for the “new” by reassessing his career under the sign of an older, nineteenth-century decadence. In so doing, it stages a larger exploration of the intersection between decadence and the Harlem Renaissance. I begin by sketching a genealogy of African American decadence that extends from W. E. B. Du Bois to second-generation Harlem writers like Richard Bruce Nugent and Wallace Thurman. I highlight Cullen's place within this lineage by examining the poetry from his 1927 Copper Sun in relationship to Charles Cullen's decadent illustrations for that volume. I conclude by showing how Cullen distinguishes himself among other Harlem writers in the way he uses decadence's investments in decay and afterlife to complicate the progressive views of history inherent to both the Harlem Renaissance and the New Negro movement.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 138 , Issue 5 , October 2023 , pp. 1078 - 1093
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

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