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Writers of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s often looked beyond the boundaries of the United States for models, and one of the most commonly invoked were writers of the Irish Renaissance. While it would be too much to claim that modern Irish writers had a strong influence on the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, it can be said that the paradigm of one generation of a historically oppressed people rising to literary greatness did serve as an inspiration and occasional guide for African American writers in the 1920s. Moreover, the situation of the Irish writer around the beginning of the twentieth century is remarkably similar to that of the African American writer in the 1920s, a fact suggesting that the two literatures, Anglo-Irish and African American, may profitably be looked at in a comparative framework.

The facts of the history of spoken language would seem to indicate the basis for a distinct, discernible “voice” for each group: “Irish English” reflected the language of a nation that had been, until the mid-nineteenth century, half Gaelic-speaking, while “Black English” was a means of cultural preservation for African Americans amid the linguistic practices of non-African American society. Nevertheless, neither group of Renaissance writers was interested primarily in language. Even John Synge, the most linguistically imitative of writers, saw his artistic task as a distillation, and not a direct representation, of the “fiery and magnificent” imagination of the Irish. James Weldon Johnson, at the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance, tried to chart a course for African American literature to steer between the “stereotype” of dialect and what he viewed as the uninteresting and culturally inappropriate use of conventional English.

With regard to the cultural heritage from which they approached the reality of the present, Irish and African American writers faced the same dilemma, namely, that the dominant culture largely refused to recognize that heritage and its validity. Thus Irish writers began to revive and update the body of Irish heroic legend, specifically the cycle of Red Branch tales. But African American writers in the 1920s did not have such a clearly defined body of heroic legend on which to draw. While there were scores of heroic tales from the period of slavery, these were compromised both by their origin in slavery and their adoption and alternation by non-African American writers in works such as Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus tale. What many African American writers opted for instead was an emphasis on the land of origin---African, as an ancient, fully developed civilization. While Irish writers were nostalgic for a culture from which they were historically separated, African American writers were nostalgic for land from which they were geographically separated.

The author mentions James Weldon Johnson's approach to the written representation of speech primarily in order to

A.point out some important differences between “Irish English” and “Black English”
B.clarify the reasoning behind Harlem Renaissance writters' preference for literal transcription of speech patterns
C.show that conventional English was a less culturally appropriate medium for African American writers than for Irish writers
D.dispel a misconception about the nature of dialect
E.provide an example comparable to John Synge's approach to linguistic representation

E显示答案

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