Zora Neale Hurston, Polk County

Keith Huneycutt (Florida Southern College)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.5: African American Writing and Culture of the United States.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Philathia Bolton (University of Akron), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), A Yemisi Jimoh (University of Massachusetts Amherst), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2005

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

Zora Neale Hurston collaborated in 1944 with Dorothy Waring to create the musical drama

Polk County

A Comedy of Negro Life on a Sawmill Camp with Authentic Negro Music in Three Acts

(Hemenway, 1977: 298). Waring apparently contributed minimally. Waring's husband, Stephen Kelen-d'Oxylion, had arranged for a November 1944 Broadway production, which was cancelled, and the play debuted in 2002, long after Hurston's death.

Polk County

is remarkable for its rich texture and originality. According to Jean Lee Cole and Charles Mitchell,

Hurston's later plays, which featured an easy blend of song and dialogue, ran counter to the structured scenes with abrupt Tin Pan Alley interpolations found in the white musicals of commercial Broadway. By the time she wrote Polk County in 1944, Broadway was

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1033 words

Citation: Huneycutt, Keith. "Polk County". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=26812, accessed 24 November 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Zora Neale Hurston, Polk County

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback