Black Orpheus and Aesthetic Historicism: On Vico and Negritude

Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy 19 (2):121-135 (2011)
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Abstract

This essay offers a novel approach for understanding the poetry of negritude and its role in the struggle for black liberation by appealing to Giambattista Vico’s insights on the historical, cultural, and myth-making function of poetry and of the mythopoetic imagination. The essay begins with a discussion of Vico’s aesthetic historicism and of his ideas regarding the role of imagination, poetry, and myth-making and then brings these ideas to bear on the discussion of the function of negritude poetry, focusing primarily on the writings of Aimé Césaire and on Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, Black Orpheus.

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10.5195/jffp.2011.495

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What is literature?Jean-Paul Sartre - 1950 - London: Methuen.
What is Literature?Jean-Paul Sartre - 1949 - London: Routledge.
The New Science of Giambattista Vico. [REVIEW]James Hutton - 1950 - Philosophical Review 59 (2):249-250.

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