Old School of Negro “Critics” Hard on Paul Laurence Dunbar (1924)

This chapter uncovers the beginnings of a more grounded Ethiopianism in its treatment of nineteenth-century lyric verse by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and others written on the topic of Ethiopia, when abstract Ethiopianism was a prominent ideology in African America. It addresses the politics of Walt Whitman's poem, particularly in the poem's “recognition” of the Ethiopian flag, in light of the press's treatment of the Anglo-Abyssinian conflict. Paul Laurence Dunbar's interpretation of the Ethiopian flag's symbolic value, in “Ode to Ethiopia” and “Frederick Douglass,” positions him uncomfortably alongside Whitman, a poet he found distasteful. His poems present an “Ethiopia” invigorated with nationalism and, unexpectedly, with militarism. The chapter also talks about two poems about Emperor Tewodros by women: “Magdala,” which appeared in the 1875 book Songs of the Year and Other Poems by “Charlton,” and “The Death of King Theodore,” in E. Davidson's 1874 The Death of King Theodore and Other Poems.

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Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Marshall Circle: Racial Representation from Blackface to Black Naturalism

African American Review ◽

10.1353/afa.2009.0066 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 43 (4) ◽

pp. 633-654

Author(s):

Jonathan Daigle

Keyword(s):

Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽

Racial Representation

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Dunbar, Paul Laurence

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.496 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

David L. Dudley

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

African Americans ◽

William Dean Howells ◽

Antebellum South ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽

The Public ◽

Black Experience ◽

Political Views ◽

African American Artists

Paul Laurence Dunbar, born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872, became the first African American to make his living solely as a writer. When he died of tuberculosis in 1906, he was perhaps the most famous and best-loved black man in America. During a short but prolific career, Dunbar composed about five hundred poems, one hundred short stories, four novels, many essays, and song lyrics. His public performances of his own works were wildly popular, and generations of African Americans were raised knowing, often by heart, his best-loved poems. In 1896, William Dean Howells, dean of American literary critics, hailed Dunbar’s work, but singled out the dialect poems for special praise. The public preferred them, too. For the decade that remained to him, Dunbar continued to write dialect poems, some of which seem to reinforce negative stereotypes of African Americans, and others that appear to romanticize the “good old days” of the antebellum South. On the other hand, Dunbar produced essays and poetry critical of America and the severe limits and indignities imposed on African Americans. Why would such a writer produce works so contradictory? This has been the crux of Dunbar studies almost from the time of his death. His critical reception reveals much about the taste and political views of subsequent generations of his readers and critics, who would do well to remember the enormous challenges facing Dunbar and all African American artists who strove to find their voices and make a living during those post-Reconstruction years, the “nadir” of the black experience in America.

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“The Sole Province of the Public Reader”: Elocutionist Hallie Quinn Brown's Performances of the Poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar

Reception Texts Readers Audiences History ◽

10.5325/reception.9.1.0036 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 36

Author(s):

Harris

Keyword(s):

Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽

The Public

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In Another Voice

10.5406/illinois/9780252040719.003.0006 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Marian Wilson Kimber

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Women Composers ◽

Art Music ◽

Racial Stereotypes ◽

Social Boundaries ◽

Musical Settings ◽

Paul Laurence Dunbar ◽

Children's Songs ◽

Musical Accompaniment

Women confirmed their own more highly cultured positions through recitation of African American dialect, particularly the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, or “child dialect,” sometimes with musical accompaniment. Many women incorporated Dunbar’s dialect poems into their repertoires, texts that also inspired settings for speaker and piano by women composers. However white women’s imitations of African American dialect perpetuated racial stereotypes such as that of the Mammy, even while their musical settings negated the text’s origins. Child dialect allowed child imitators to express comedic and rebellious sentiments without transgressing feminine social boundaries. The child-like persona cultivated by diseuse Kitty Cheatham facilitated her eclectic programming of children’s songs, nursery rhymes, and European art music alongside spirituals and African-American dialect texts.

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