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Article: Jean Toomer: Selected Essays and Literary Criticism.(Review)
- Article from:
- The Mississippi Quarterly
- Article date:
- September 22, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Mississippi State University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Jean Toomer: Selected Essays and Literary Criticism, edited by Robert B. Jones. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996. xxvii, 130 pp. $25.00
Cane is a central text for students of the Harlem Renaissance, but Jean Toomer's centrality to the movement has always seemed more problematic. He published little else of significance to African-American literature, and after the 1920s he rarely participated in black culture, committing himself to the Gurdjieffian spiritual program and then the Society of Friends and identifying his loyalties in more universal, multicultural ways. But even in the early 1920s, Toomer was as much akin to such Seven Arts critics as ...