Jean Wagner's most enduring contribution to the
study of Afro-American poetry is his insistence that it be
analyzed in a religious, as well as secular, frame of
xreference. The appropriateness of such an approach may
seem self-evident for a tradition commencing with
spirituals and owing its early forms, rhythms, vocabulary,
and evangelical fervor to Wesleyan hymnals. But before
Wagner a secular outlook that analyzed Black poetry
solely within the context of political and social protest
was dominant in the field.
It is Wagner who first demonstrated the essential
fusion of racial and religious feeling in Afro-American
poetry. The two, he argued, form a symbiotic union in
which religious feelings are often applied to racial issues
and racial problems are often projected onto a
metaphysical plane. Wagner found this most eloquently
illustrated in the Black spiritual, where the desire for
freedom in this world and the hope for salvation in the
next are inextricably intertwined.