VI. Reading Comprehension
Among the leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance,
Countee Cullen is the writer whose role in that movement is
most difficult to assess. This difficulty arises in part because his
poetry emulates the style and tone of nineteenth century English
Romanticism, but real complexity concerns his choice of subject
matter.
Cullen entered Harvard in 1925, to pursue a master in
English, about the same time his collections of poems, Color,
was published. Written in a careful, traditional style, the work
celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism.
Cullen insisted on the freedom of the Black point to choose any
subject: he believed that a restricted concern with race was a
hindrance to the development of the Black artist, and he claimed
that there is poetry written by Blacks, but not a linguistic
category that could be called Black poetry.
Yet he was quick to add that for the Black poet, escaping
awareness of race was impossible, and Cullen was always in
some way writing about being Black. By suffusing an
essentially European literary tradition with race consciousness,
Cullen in his own way succeeded in doing what other writers of
the Harlem Renaissance were doing by experimenting with
Black folk forms: making a lasting contribution to the growth of
a distinctive African American voice.
【題組】50. The author’s conclusion about Cullen’s contribution to the
development of a distinctive African American voice would
be most weakened by the publication of which of the
following?
(A)The diary of a writer of the Harlem Renaissance
documenting the racial episodes in one of the writer’s
novels.
(B) A survey of African American literature demonstrating
Black writers’ ultimate rejection of European literary
models.
(C) The poems of a nineteenth-century Black poet who used
the forms of eighteen-century English poetry.
(D) An assay by a Black poet insisting on this responsibility
of Black writers to address the issue of race in their
writing.
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