ABSTRACT
Jean Toomer's Cane enacts the confrontation of Romanticism and Afro-American culture. The untroubled assumption of voice at the heart of the call-and-response pattern is no longer possible in a world altered by Romanticism. By transforming the streetcar rumble into speech, Dan Moore has given the earth voice; and in the process found his own voice. Hearing a voice from deep in the earth allows Dan a fantasy of the sexual consummation he never achieves in reality. The throbbing of the earth beneath him is for Dan the evidence of a responding voice, and again the voice carries a promise of renewal through a black messiah. For Romantic poets, response from nature assures the continuity that empowers voice; for Afro-American poets, the empowering response is from their people. Cane is the record of Toomer's discovery that call and response - the drama of finding authority through communal voice - has enabled the creation of a distinctively Afro-American literary form.
