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Jean Toomer after Cane

2021; Oxford University Press; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/melus/mlab005

1946-3170

Amanda Mehsima Licato,

Literature, Politics, and Exile Studies

Abstract I reassess Jean Toomer’s poetics after the publication of his first novel Cane (1923). Cane’s critical reception has impacted and limited our understanding of his poetry, and of his racial identification, from the late 1920s to 1940s, when Toomer sought inspiration from the Eastern mystic, George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, and later from the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. Challenging the neat binary of Toomer’s lyrical and didactic strains in his later work, and spotlighting the complexity of his racial posturing, I argue that the central elements of Toomer’s poetics remained constant, particularly his attention to moral and spiritual enlightenment in order to address the pressing psychosocial and racial issues of his time.