Towards a Horizontal Critical Literary Reading of Hughes’ and Angelou’s Poems

Abstract

As a reader of literary discourse, one endeavours to explore and understand the similarities with and differences from the other in that literary discourse is laden with the authors’ and characters’/speakers’ experiences. Readers allow themselves either a centripetal or a centrifugal reading with reference to their implication in the text and to their different backgrounds. As a result, this view created binary oppositions such as the self versus the other, male versus female and oppressor versus oppressed. Therefore, the study of literary discourse should attempt to generate a horizontal account for human relationships beyond any vertical social, cultural, racial, sexual and even ideological considerations.