the harlem renaissance

America witnessed great social transition between the end of its Civil War and the beginning of the First World War. Depictions of rural idyll and its regional traditions of ‘local color’ writing were carried forward, but a metropolitan mode of unforeseen scale was introduced to its literature, with descriptions of urbanity and culture, but also of a suburban, skyscraper scrawl. Social distress and a new politics came also with this vast lifestyle.