A Change in the Weather: Modernist Imagination, African American Imaginary

Index

Adorno, Theodor, 71, 129n17 advertisements, 46–47, 79n11, 100 African American artists: attitudes of, 10–11; role in modernism, 19, 108, 137–38; use of nonsense, 19, 54. See also Dunbar; Handy; Hughes; Toomer; Williams, B. African American culture: as American culture, 18, 56–57; American culture impacted by, 1, 6–7, 17, 149–51; displacement of, 146–47; as modernist, 4, 56; nadir of, 7, 16, 40; nonsense in, 54, 90, 91; role in modernism, 6, 19, 108. See also African American modernism; minstrelsy; music African American Imaginary: as an analytic tool, 5, 16; concept of, 17, 18–19, 27–28, 56; displacement of, 121, 122–23, 125, 137–38; historical aspect of, 27. See also language; music African American literature, critics of, 146–47 African American middle class, 7–9, 11 African American modernism: approach to, 159, 160; authority of, 150; displacement of, 121, 122–23, 125; marginalization of, 119–20. See also African American culture ; Cane; modernism, literary African American vernacular language, 14, 15, 17. See also “Negro” dialect “All Coons Look Alike to Me” (song), 86 American culture: African American culture as, 18, 56–57; contemporary, 3, 149; ignorance of, 150–51. See also African American culture; African American Imaginary “An Ante-bellum Sermon” (Dunbar), 74 Anthology of Magazine Verse (Braithwaite), 157–58 anxiety: in “The Comedian as the Letter C,” 31; in coon songs, 43; Crispin’s, 34; in “Portrait of a Lady,” 37; role in the modernist subject, 33 Armstrong, Louis, 19, 42, 54 arts, visual, 129 aura in art, 65 “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (Greenberg), 125– 28, 129 Baker, Houston A., Jr.: on African American modernists, 5, 120; on Dunbar, 68–69, 81–83; on nonsense in minstrelsy, 91 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 84, 103 Baltimore, MD, musical significance of, 40 the banjo, 35–36, 77 barbers and barbershops: interracial contact in, 1–2, 155; modernism in relation to, 1; quartets in, 2, 3, 13 Beckett, Samuel: African American culture in relation to, 102–3, 159; works: Waiting for Godot, 1, 85, 101–2, 103–8 Behn, Aphra, 16 Bell, Clive, 112 Benjamin, Walter, 65, 84 Bergson, Henri, 143 Berlin, Edward A., 17, 59–60 Berthoff, Warner, 153 Bhabha, Homi K., 5, 33, 94, 103 “Black and Blue” (song), 42 blackface, 17, 41 blackness, 58, 146 Black Swan record label, 14, 15 Blake, Eubie, 21 Bland, James A., 60–61 Blesh, Rudi, 17 Bloom, Harold, 31 blues music: language of in Cane, 50, 139; songs, 14; women singers of, 140. See also “St. Louis Blues” The Book of American Negro Poetry (Johnson), 15, 73 The Book of American Negro Spirituals (Johnson), 2 Braithwaite, William Stanley, 121, 157–58 “The Bridge” (Crane), 100 Brooks, Cleanth, 122, 123 Brooks, Shelton, 9 Bruce, Dickson D., 72 Burleigh, Harry T., 34n1 Butler, Judith, 43–44 179 INDEX Cane (Toomer): blues references in, 139, 140; city-rural tensions in, 141–42, 143; displacement of in canon, 115, 130–31, 138, 146–47; as modernist, 139, 159; promise and tragedy in, 144–46; Spring and All juxtaposed to, 132; as vaudeville, 110–11; White Buildings compared to, 130 “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” (song), 61n2 “The Cat and the Saxophone (2 a.m.)” (Hughes), 133 “A Change in the Weather” (lyric), 13–14 Chaplin, Charlie, 84 “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (Hurston), 39, 47–49 Charters, Ann, 92, 93, 95 Chesnutt, Charles, 10, 12–13 cities: barbers and barbershops in, 2; ghettos in, 1, 7, 8; in Cane, 141–42; in minstrelsy, 88, 91; interracial contact in, 1; tramp figure in relation to, 100 cliché: characteristics of, 64–65; in lyric art, 2– 3, 14; modern aspect of, 64; poetics of the, 108; symbolist aspect of, 79–80. See also language Cole, Bob, 86 colonial uncanny, the: African American Imaginary, in relation to the, 27, 35; in “The Comedian as the Letter C,” 28, 32, 34; Freud, in relation to, 33 Coltrane, John, 149–50 “The Comedian as the Letter C”: anxiety in, 31, 34–35; banjo in, 35–36, 37; colonial uncanny in, 28, 32, 34; the “other” in, 33; racialized language in, 29–30 comedy: characteristics of, 89, 90, 91, 104, 105; figures of, 85; in Waiting for Godot, 103, 108; significance of, 84. See also minstrelsy coon songs and singers: characteristics of, 42– 43, 44; lyrics of, 14; Stein’s language influenced by, 41, 46, 47; “St Louis Blues” in relation to, 55. See also music; race and racism Cornell, Drucilla, 18 Crane, Hart: celebrity of, 158; on...