Langston Hughes - Patternmaster

Abstract

In the US academy Langston Hughes is considered a great `folk poet'. This specialist sort of literary designation is not wrong; the problem is that it has come to replace the more historically accurate and generalist description of Hughes as one of the most well-rounded writers and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Outside the United States, Hughes is usually ranked alongside Eliot and Yeats, both in terms of overall intellectual influence within the English language and literature tradition and for his catholic literary output over the course of four decades of work. The thesis here is that the downgrading of Hughes in the US academy, from world-class writer and intellectual to `Negro folk poet', is not only symptomatic of the endurance of white racial oppression in US society, but also extremely costly for students and scholars of American literature who have thus far been made familiar with only a fraction of his writings.