Paperback / softback | |
August 1, 1989 | |
9780801839481 | |
English | |
192 | |
8.00 Inches (US) | |
5.38 Inches (US) | |
.5 Pounds (US) | |
$32.00 USD, £26.50 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Slavery and the Literary Imagination
Seven noted scholars examine slave narratives and the topic of slavery in American literature, from Frederick Douglass's Narrative (1845)—treated in chapted by Jamkes Olney and William L. Andrews—to Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose (1984). Among the contributors, Arnold Rampersad reads W.E.B. DuBois's classic work The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as a response to Booker T. Washington's Up from Salvery (1901). Hazel V. Carby examines novels of slavery and novels of sharecropping and questions the critical tendency to comflate the two, thereby also conflating the nineteenth century wiith the twentieth, the rural with the urban.
Although works by Afro-American writers are the primary focus, the authors also examine antislavery novels by white women. Hortense J. Spillers gives extensive attention to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, in juxtaposition with Ishmael Reed's Flight to Canada; Carolyn L. Karcher readers Lydia Maria Child's A Romance of the Republic as an abolitionist vision of America's racial destiny.
In a concluding chapter, Deborah E. McDowell's reading of Dessa Rose reveals how slavery and freedom—dominant themes in nineteenth-century black literature—continue to command the attention of contemporary authors.
About the Authors
Deborah E. McDowell is associate professor of English at the Univeristy of Virginia. Arnold Rampersad is professor of English at Columbia Univeristy.
Reviews
"This volume of essays represents the widest spectrum of criticism to date on the intersection of American slavery and literary artistry."
Johns Hopkins University Press | |
Selected Papers from the English Institute | |
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From 17 | |
Paperback / softback | |
August 1, 1989 | |
9780801839481 | |
English | |
192 | |
8.00 Inches (US) | |
5.38 Inches (US) | |
.5 Pounds (US) | |
$32.00 USD, £26.50 GBP | |
v2.1 Reference | |
Other Titles by Deborah E. McDowell
The Changing Same"
Other Titles by Arnold Rampersad
Lawd Today!
Other Titles from Selected Papers from the English Institute
Cannibals, Witches, and Divorce
Sex, Politics, and Science in the Nineteenth-Century Novel
Consequences of Theory
Other Titles in LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory
Bergson, Eliot, and American Literature
The Sound of Writing
How Writing Made Us Human, 3000 BCE to Now
Other Titles in Literary theory
Bergson, Eliot, and American Literature
The Sound of Writing
Allegorical Moments