The Italian Sonnet

In contrast, the English, or Shakespearean sonnet (named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form, but because he was its most famous practitioner) consists of three quatrains of four lines and a couplet of two lines. The couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic shift. This form is seen in much of Claude McKay's poetry, including the poem "America":

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,á

And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,á

Stealing my breath of life, I will confessá

I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!á

Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,á

Giving me strength erect against her hate.á

Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.á

Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,á

I stand within her walls with not a shredá

Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.á

And see her might and granite wonders there,á

Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,á

Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

This poem follows the usual rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b, c-d-c

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concern to turn back on one's own past, to recollect one's life in order to narrate it, is not at all universal. The authors of slave narratives certainly had more reason to engage in this activity than most. The public assertion of the self, is one major reason for the relevance of the slave narrative. Though it seems that this is a luxury for most of us, the public assertion of ones self was a matter of life and death for the ex-slave, whose previous social status was in itself a denial of his selfhood. In the slave narrative, the path of the plot obviously leads from slavery to freedom, and the moment of significance is the reacquisition of this selfhood. If for no other reason, the slave's reclamation of himself is an extremely important reason for the relevance of the slave narrative. Some good examples of this genre are Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an African Slave, and Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. If not for the aforementioned reasons, the importance of the slave narrative seems to rest in the fact that they are a historical record of courageùnot only for the slave, but as a work of American History. 8. The title work, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow is am
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Claude McKay's, Metamorphosis Gregor, Arts Movement, Black Elk, African American, Jim Crow, Gregor Samsa, Gregor Samsa's, Day Absence, Originally Italian, african american, black elk, ethics 'sthetics, slave narrative, arts movement, black arts movement, black arts, black people, real cool, black artists, elk messianic figure, indigenous people, real reason living, black elk messianic, middle-class white women,
Approximate Word count = 2644
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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