TEST2READINGCOMPREHENSION

SECTION I

Time-35 minutes

28 Questions

Directions: Each passage in this section is followed by a group of questions to be answered on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage. For some of the questions, more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question. However, you are to choose the best answer, that is, the response that most accurately¹ and completely answers the question, and blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.

　

There is substantial evidence that by 1926, with the publication of The Weary Blues², Langston Hughes had broken with two well-established traditions in African American literature. In The Weary Blues, Hughes chose to modify the traditions that decreed that African American literature must promote racial acceptance and integration³, and that, in order to do so, it must reflect and understanding and mastery of Western European literary techniques and styles. Necessarily excluded by this decree, linguistically⁴ and thematically, was the vast amount of secular⁵ folk material in the oral tradition that had been created by Black people in the years of slavery and after. It might be pointed⁶ out that even the spirituals or "sorrow songs" of the slaves-as distinct from their secular songs and stories-had been Europeanized to make them acceptable within these African American traditions after the Civil War. In 1862 northern White writers had commented favorably on the unique and provocative⁷ melodies of these "sorrow songs" when they first heard them sung by slaves in the Carolina sea islands. But by 1916, ten years before the publication of The Weary Blues, Hurry T. Burleigh, the Black baritone soloist⁸ at New York s ultrafashionable Saint George s Episcopal Chruch, had published Jubilee⁹ Songs of the United States, with every spiritual arranged so that a concert singer could sing it "in the manner of an art song." Clearly, the artistic¹⁰ work of Black people could be used to promote racial acceptance and integration only on the condition that it became Europeanized.

Even more than his rebellion against this restrictive tradition in African American art, Hughes s expression of the vibrant¹¹ folk culture of Black people established his writing as a landmark¹² in the history of African American literature. Most of his folk poems have the distinctive¹³ marks of this folk culture’s oral tradition: they contain many instances of naming and enumeration¹⁴, considerable hyperbole and understatement, and a strong infusion¹⁵ of street-talk rhyming. There is a deceptive¹⁶ veil of artlessness in these poems. Hughes prided himself on being an impromptu¹⁷ and impressionistic writer of poetry. His, he insisted, was not an artfully constructed poetry. Yet an analysis of his dramatic monologues¹⁸ and other poems reveals that his poetry was carefully and artfully crafted. In his folk poetry we find features common to all folk literature, such as dramatic ellipsis¹⁹, narrative²⁰ compression, rhythmic²¹ repetition, and monosyllabic emphasis. The peculiar²² mixture of irony²³ and humor we find in his writing is a distinguishing feature of his folk poetry. Together, these aspects of Hughes s writing helped to modify the previous restrictions on the techniques and subject matter of Black writers and consequently to broaden the linguistic and thematic range of African American literature