Wilburn, Reginald A. "On James Weldon Johnson's Milton and a Sinful Poetics of Anti-lynching (Re)form." Throughlines. www.throughlines.org/suite-content/milton-and-anti-lynchng-reform. [Date accessed].

Milton and anti-lynching reform

A drama not meant to be performed referencing Milton and a stinging indictment of lynch culture.

Download the transcript
Reginald A. Wilburn
Texas Christian University

On James Weldon Johnson's Milton and a Sinful Poetics of Anti-lynching (Re)form | Watch the full talk

Presented by Reginald Wilburn at Poetics: A RaceB4Race Symposium in 2023

Reginald Wilburn analyzes James Weldon Johnson’s anti-lynching poem “Brothers – American Drama” (1916) and its intertextual references to Milton. Johnson, born in 1871, was the first African American professor hired at New York University and the lyricist for “Lift Every Heart and Sing.” Wilburn highlights the Miltonic features in “Brothers” that work as intertextual bookmarks, demonstrating how the poem draws on collateral knowledge that is part of the history of Black appropriation that “chokes and engages” with Milton. Wilburn describes how Johnson’s use of unrhymed blank verse, his subtitle, and his creation of a drama not meant to be performed all reference Milton and create a stinging indictment of lynch culture.

Further learning

Recommended

Video

Deplatforming Chaucer

By using the untimely juxtaposition method outlined by Seeta Chaganti, Chaucer's House of Fame can act as a catalyst to a discussion about the removal of Confederate monuments.

Seeta Chaganti
Video

Blackness as metaphor

The history of racial construction is long and non-linear. Unpacking Blackness within medieval epics, and examining how Black characters are treated in these stories allow us to see how medieval Europe used Blackness as a rhetorical tool.

Cord J. Whitaker
Syllabus

Race in the European Middle Ages

This course explores the changing patterns, meanings, and uses of racializing discourses in medieval Europe from the 10th through 15th centuries.

Geraldine Heng