eBook - PDF

Origins of the Dream

Name: Origins of the Dream
ISBN: 9780813055183

Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric

W. Jason Miller,

261 pages
English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

Origins of the Dream

Hughes's Poetry and King's Rhetoric

W. Jason Miller,

About this book

Since Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, some scholars have privately suspected that King's "dream" was connected to Langston Hughes's poetry. Drawing on archival materials, including notes, correspondence, and marginalia, W. Jason Miller provides a completely original and compelling argument that Hughes's influence on King's rhetoric was, in fact, evident in more than just the one famous speech.

King's staff had been wiretapped by J. Edgar Hoover and suffered accusations of communist influence, so quoting or naming the leader of the Harlem Renaissance—who had his own reputation as a communist—would only have intensified the threats against the civil rights activist. Thus, the link was purposefully veiled through careful allusions in King's orations. In Origins of the Dream, Miller lifts that veil and shows how Hughes's revolutionary poetry became a measurable inflection in King's voice. He contends that by employing Hughes's metaphors in his speeches, King negotiated a political climate that sought to silence the poet's subversive voice. By separating Hughes's identity from his poems, King helped the nation unconsciously embrace the incendiary ideas behind his poetry.

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Yes, you can access Origins of the Dream by W. Jason Miller in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literary Criticism for Comparative Literature. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.