Négritude

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Jennifer Jahn (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Tim Unwin, University of Bristol
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 4.1.2: Francophone Writing and Culture of Central America and the Caribbean.
Vol. editors: Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Maeve McCusker (Queen's University Belfast), David Murphy (University of Strathclyde)

Domains

Slavery and anti-slavery
Theory, Concept, Approach (social science)

Dates

Date of occurrence 1934-1960

Places

French Guyana (Guiana) (Location)
Martinique (Location)
Senegal (Location)

Negritude, an ideological movement that developed in France in the 1930s, during an era of decreasing colonial power, was based on two principal beliefs: the ennoblement of the black (then generally called Negro) race in response to racist attitudes and the revaluation of African civilizations. It is most commonly associated with the Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire, the Senegalese poet and first president of his country Léopold Sédar Senghor, and the poet and politician Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guyana, although many others contributed significantly to the movement's birth.

African-American writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston, to name but a few,…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3303 words

Citation: Jahn, Jennifer. "Négritude". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 February 2009 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1722, accessed 21 November 2024.]

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Négritude

Domains

Dates

Places

Save this article

Leave Feedback