The Works of Alain Locke

by Charles Molesworth (Editor), Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Foreword by)

Overview

With the publication of The New Negro in 1925, Alain Locke introduced readers all over the U.S. to the vibrant world of African American thought. As an author, editor, and patron, Locke rightly earned the appellation "Godfather of the Harlem Renaissance." Yet, his intellectual contributions extend far beyond that single period of cultural history. Throughout his life he penned essays, on topics ranging from John Keats to Sigmund Freud, in addition to his trenchant social commentary on race and society. The Works of Alain Locke provides the largest collection available of his brilliant essays, gathered from a career that spanned forty years. They cover an impressively broad field of subjects: philosophy, literature, the visual arts, music, the theory of value, race, politics, and multiculturalism. Alongside seminal works such as "The New Negro" the volume features essays like "The Ethics of Culture," "Apropos of Africa," and "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy." Together, these writings demonstrate Locke's standing as the leading African American thinker between W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. The foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the introduction by

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199970384
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/10/2012
Series:	Collected Black Writings
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Charles Molesworth is the coauthor, with Leonard Harris, of Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

Table of Contents

Foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Introduction
Note on the Text and Acknowledgments

I. Literature

1. On Paul Laurence Dunbar (1905)
2."The Romantic Movement As Expressed by John Keats" (1907)
3. "Emile Verhaeren" (1917)
4. "Colonial Literature of France" (1923)
5. "The Younger Literary Movement" (1923); co authored with Du Bois
6. Review of Countee Cullen's Color (1926)
7. Review of Langston Hughes The Weary Blues (1926)
8. Review of Langston Hughes' Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)
9. "The Poetry of Negro Life" (Preface to Four Negro Poets, 1926)
10. "American Literary Tradition and the Negro"(1926)
11. Review of FIRE!!(1927)
12. "Message of the Negro Poets"(1927)
13. Foreword to Georgia Douglas Johnson's An Autumn Love Cycle (1928)
14 ."Both Sides of the Color Line" (Review of W. Thurman and J. Fauset (1929)
15. "Negro Minority in American Literature"(1946)

II. Art, Drama and Music

1. "Steps Toward the Negro Theatre" (1922)
2. "A Note on African Art" (1924)
3. "The Negro Spirituals" (1925)
4. "More of the Negro in Art" (1925)
5. "The Negro and the American Stage" (1926)
6. "Drama of Negro Life" (1926)
7. "The Blondiau-Theatre Arts Collection" (1927)
8. "The American Negro as Artist" (1931)
9. "Toward a Critique of Negro Music"(1934)
10. Excerpt from The Negro and His Music (1936)
11. Excerpt from Negro Art: Past and Present (1936)
12. "Negro Music Goes to Par" (1939)
13. "Broadway and Negro Drama" (1941)

III. Esthetics

1. "Impressions of Luxor"(1923)
2. "Internationalism: Friend or Foe? (1925)
3. "Negro Youth Speaks" (1925)
4. "The Legacy of the Ancestral Arts" (1925)
5. "African Art: Classic Style" (1935)
6. "Negro in American Culture"(1929)
7. "Our Little Renaissance" (1927)
8. "Beauty Instead of Ashes" (1928)
9. "Art or Propaganda?" (1928)
10. "Beauty and the Provinces" (1929)
11. "Spiritual Truancy" (1928, on Claude McKay)
12. "Propaganda - or Poetry?" (1936)
13. "The Negro's Contribution to American Culture" (1939)

IV. Race

1."Race Contacts and Inter-Racial Relations" (1915)
2. "Apropos of Africa" (1924)
3. "The Concept of Race as Applied to Social Culture" (1924)
4. "The Problem of Race Classification" (1923)
5. "Should the Negro be Encouraged to Cultural Equality" (1927)
6. "Contribution of Race to Culture" (1930)
7. "Slavery in the Modern Manner"(1931)
8. "Harlem: Dark Weather-Vane" (1936)
9. Foreword to Frederick Douglass's Life and Times(1940)
10. "Whither Race Relations? A Critical Commentary" (1944)
11. "The Negro in the Three Americas" (1944)

A SPECIAL SECTION:

When Peoples Meet: A Study in Race and Cultural Contacts (1942): Interchapters, written by Locke.

V. Value and Culture

1. "Oxford by A Negro Student" (1909)
2."The American Temperament" (1911)
3. "The Ethics of Culture" (1923)
4. "The New Negro" (1925)
5. "Values and Imperatives" (1935)
6. "Value" (1935)
7. "A Functional View of Value Ultimates"(1945)
8. "Self-Criticism: The Third Dimension of Culture" (1950)
9. "Frontiers of Culture" (1950)
10. "Values That Matter" (Review of Perry, 1954)
11. "Freud and Scientific Morality" (n.d.)

VI. Democracy

1. "The Mandate System: A New Code of Empire"(1927)
2. "The Negro Vote and the New Deal" (1936)
3. "Ballad for Democracy" (1940)
4. "Color: Unfinished Business of Democracy" (1942)
5. "Democracy Faces a World Order" (1942)
6. "Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace"(1942)
7. "Moral Imperatives for World Order" (1944)
8. Review of Du Bois's Color and Democracy (1945)
9. "Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy" (1946)
10. "Pluralism and Ideological Peace"(1947)

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Molesworth has compiled fascinating essays on art, aesthetics, race, and democracy written by Locke well before and after, not just during, his so-called deanship of the New Negro Renaissance in the 1920s. Anyone interested in Locke and his place in American intellectual history should read this book." —Gene Jarrett, author of Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature

"Widely, and rightly, celebrated as one of the key architects of the New Negro cultural renaissance of the 1920s, Alain Locke is nevertheless more often invoked than carefully engaged. The Works of Alain Locke joins recent scholarly efforts to address this imbalance by recapturing the scope and complexity of almost a half-century of Locke's writing—on literature, visual and performing arts, aesthetics, race, and democracy. Charles Molesworth's fine introduction provides excellent historical, intellectual, and cultural context to this definitive collection of an essential figure in American cultural history." —James Miller, author of Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial

"A superb new collection...An impressive potpourri of Locke's writings covering the full flower of his passions and prose." —Philadelphia Weekly

From the Publisher