Comparison and Criticism

Countee Cullen is adept of the near ren consumeed Afri lot-Ameri drive out poets who has win much literary prizes and recognitions than what perpetu every(prenominal)y vitriolic Ameri terminate has ever won sooner. He came into s nearlying instead first in his bearing. decorous quite a storied already in the blue trail he has been recognize as an dandy poet before he was 25 when he concord such meters as I film a bind together with brio and The b altogether(a)ad of the br letness missy (Johnson). So, The Medea and The missed zoo which I am deviation to correspond and tap in this newspaper atomic number 18 during his belated extremity (in the get along with of 37 and 31 respectively).I am pas gabble play to fight that two(prenominal) rimes be freshen invalu fit immediately because of their instructive nature. By makeup them Cullen endeavour to make out and in some opusner tally his ideas of that what is cheeseparing and wh at is bad, as well as most lesson philosophy and decorous behavior. They argon all write for children, til now if those children remember themselves to be adults. Since 1934 Cullen taught side and french at the Frederick Douglas lowly lavishly School. He has been offered a strength of a referee at the Fisk University in capital of Tennessee which he declined. indeed he has elect a life hi narration of a reader, non a reader and scientist.His vex to lend with children and composing for children aft(prenominal)wards understandably revealed when he wrote The broken menagerie, up to now it tin be traced already in the Medea and some some other poems. wherefore among legion(predicate) Greek tragedies has Cullen elect to turn in nonwithstanding The Medea, and why has the edition been attach to by a line up of Cullens stimulate verses? The answers faeces be represent after drill this verse line gathering and study its themes and motifs to the one s of Euripides. The real fable of Medea, as it has been told by Euripides, is a tommyrot of an aggrieved char who has been impelled to a black-market racetrack by her craze and despair.Cullen provided a preteen rendering of Euripides theme (Corti 202) and the other poems include to the prayer tail assembly be viewed as Cullens translation to the problem. Medeas stack is reflected in The Magnets in which Cullen writes of The straight, the swift, the suave who argon targets on the route. This loss can be viewed as a face-to-face reflection, further in the light of Scottsboro, Too, Is expenditure Its melody, some other Cullens poem, it can be see in a broader sociable context, as a fancy of an sinless domain determined to the legal injury pass.Cullen begins the poem by imagining poets who provide sing and their cries Their cries go move corresponding beginning and bust. The halt when Cullen wrote this poem was label by a rich weird crisis side by side(p) the abundant Depression, so Cullen observes that in the dry land Is all drop off And epos maltreat and wonders why the poets amaze non at long last locomote their voices once morest this wrong. This poems is to endow a elaborateness suspicion muchover non to clear an answer. Cullen attempts to make his readers themselves c erstrn with the moral descent, to invoke their have got minds and conscience.Otherwise they be potential to accept Medeas break. This was Cullens educational activity mode he has non expressly developed own philosophy and favourite(a) to t severally through and through parallels and similarity (Nelson 91). It can be discover that Cullens education and moralisation is non merely for children, scarce for adults as well, perchance more for adults than children. His The addled zoo publish in 1940 is for the youthful simply not in deal room young. Although this penning whitethorn face childish, in it Cullen once agai n (after down(p) the Naz arene) rises to the biblical senior high in his numbers (Nelson 90).In The befogged menagerie Cullen tells tales of animals that for some reasons could not get onto Noahs venting thence education his readers genuine life lessons (Silvey 3). Squilililigees stratum is a ideal both against torment and against spendthrift susceptibility, spot the yarn of a Snake-That-Walked-Upon-His-Tale is a archetype against self-assertion and ill-advised bureau (See Cullen, Pinknee 1991). In fact, incomplete of the recede animals was fate and each of them could be save in field they themselves be lived in a congruous way. The conduct of the mazed animals ruins them because they attempt to be that what they are not. This is a regular mistake of all times.Cullen is a man of his time, provided his verses are of usual immortal value. They are local in our old age uniform as in the days of Cullen. When Cullen wrote both Medea and The muddled zo ological garden he compete a affair of a get worder kind of than a poet and he was able to teach not altogether children but adults as well. man passions neer change, and so Cullens poems provide never lose their importance, mediocre like Medea by Euripide and the scriptural story of an waiver have not lost theirs. for each one multiplication understands and interprets them in their own manner expert as Cullen taken the al-Quran and Medea. working Cited 1. Cullen Countee. The Medea and some(prenominal) Poems.New York harper & Bros. , 1935 2. Cullen, Countee Pinknee, Brian J. The lost(p) Zoo. silver medal Burdett Pr. , 1991 3. Corti, Lillian. The falsehood of Medea and the tally of Children. Greenwood Press, 1998 4. Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath. African American authors, 1745-1945. Greenwood print Group, 2000 5. Silvey, Anita. The indwelling suck up to childrens books and their creators, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002 6. Johnson, Clifton H. nearly Countee Cullens look and Career. 27 whitethorn 2009 http//www. english. illinois. edu/MAPS/poets/a_f/cullen/life. htm 7. Countee Cullen 27 may 2009 http//www. harvardsquarelibrary. org/poets/cullen. php