Unchained voices : an anthology of Black authors in the English-speaking world of the eighteenth century / Vincent Carretta, editor.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Carretta, Vincent.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Black authors.

English literature.

Black people--English-speaking countries--History--18th century--Sources.

Black people.

Black people--English-speaking countries--Literary collections.

African Americans.

History.

English-speaking countries.

Great Britain.

Black people--Great Britain--History--18th century--Sources.

English literature--English-speaking countries.

African Americans--History--18th century--Sources.

Black people--Great Britain--Literary collections.

American literature--African American authors.

American literature.

African Americans--Literary collections.

English literature--18th century.

Genre:

Literary collections.

Literature.

Physical Description:

xi, 387 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 1996.

Summary:

In Unchained Voices, Vincent Carretta has assembled the most comprehensive anthology ever published of writings by eighteenth-century people of African descent, enabling many of these authors to be heard clearly for the first time in two centuries. Their writings reflect the surprisingly diverse experiences of blacks on both sides of the Atlantic-America, Britain, the West Indies, and Africa - between 1760 and 1798. Letters, poems, captivity narratives, petitions, criminal autobiographies, economic treatises, travel accounts, and antislavery arguments were produced during a time of various and changing political and religious loyalties. Although the theme of liberation from physical or spiritual captivity runs throughout the collection, freedom also clearly led to hardship and disappointment for a number of these authors. In his introduction, Carretta reconstructs the historical and cultural context of the works, emphasizing the constraints of the eighteenth-century genres under which these authors wrote. The texts and annotations are based on extensive research in both published and manuscript holdings of archives in the United States and the United Kingdom. Appropriate for undergraduates as well as for scholars, Unchained Voices gives a clear sense of the major literary and cultural issues at the heart of writings in English by people of African descent.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

0813119766

0813108845

OCLC:

34151137