"Adventuring through the pieces of a still unorganized mosaic": Reading Jean Toomer's collage aesthetic in Cane

Article Abstract:

The thematic collage on the pages of Jean Toomer's book, "Cane" with Boasian anthropology are investigated to demonstrate Toomer's reworking of Franz Boas's ideas by moving from evolutionist determinism to an intervention in early twentieth-century debates about American culture. It is observed that Toomer feels that Americans are entangled in uneasy racial interdependence and thus remains negative about American democracy and holds back the future of African American identity.

author: Farebrother, Rachel
Portrayals, Criticism and interpretation, Blacks, Black identity, Social science literature, American culture, Critical essay, Cane (Book), Toomer, Jean

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Buster Keaton and the South: The first things and the last

Article Abstract:

Silent film comedian, Buster Keaton's majority of films are set in the South to which he attaches the portrayal of a vanishing past and his films seem drawn to both the first of things such as the first machine, and the first locomotive and to the last such as the last paddlesteamer and the climax of the Civil War. It is found that of all the great filmmakers of the silent films, Keaton has understood the duality of the images more clearly and has captured it incredibly.

author: Bilton, Alan
Biography, Comedians, Keaton, Buster

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Body, word, and photograph: Sylvia Plath's cold war collage and the Thalidomide scandal

Article Abstract:

Sylvia Plath's collage, like her poetry, is concerned less with narrative than exposition, and this collage- or montage-maker starts with photographs, then modifies them, assembling and shaping them to construct her own photographic essay. An example of this process is Plath's poem, 'Thalidomide', in which, the expository theme is the violation of the body, and most specifically, violation of the female body, moving from the moment of violation to its consequences.

author: Peel, Robin
Works, Women poets, Plath, Sylvia

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subjects list: United States
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