Impossible witnesses : truth, abolitionism, and slave testimony / Dwight A. McBride.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McBride, Dwight A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American prose literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American prose literature.

American prose literature--African American authors.

Antislavery movements--United States--History--19th century.

Antislavery movements.

Enslaved persons' writings, American.

United States.

History.

American prose literature--19th century--History and criticism.

Enslaved persons--United States--Biography--History and criticism.

Enslaved persons.

Biography.

African Americans--Biography--History and criticism.

African Americans.

African Americans--Biography.

Enslaved persons' writings, American--History and criticism.

Autobiography--African American authors.

Autobiography.

Slavery in literature.

Physical Description:

xvi, 207 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, [2001]

Summary:

Black literary production during the 19th century was dominated by the issues of slavery, racial subjugation, abolitionist politics and liberation. This book examines how those authors bore witness to the experiences they described.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Bearing Witness: Memory, Theatricality, the Body, and Slave Testimony 1

2 Abolitionist Discourse: A Transatlantic Context 16

Abolitionist Discourse and Romanticism 21

Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in England 25

African Humanity and the Possibility of Rage in Edgeworth, Cowper, and Opie 42

On Whiteness and Humanity: The Example of Blake's "The Little Black Boy" 59

Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in the U.S. 62

Emerson and the Fugitive Slave Law: Toward a Theory of Whiteness 67

Troping the Slave: Margaret Fuller's Review of Douglass's Narrative 75

The Body as Evidence: Garrison's Defense of David Walker's Appeal 78

3 "I Know What a Slave Knows": Mary Prince as Witness, or the Rhetorical Uses of Experience 85

4 Appropriating the Word: Phillis Wheatley, Religious Rhetoric, and the Poetics of Liberation 103

5 Speaking as "the African": Olaudah Equiano's Moral Argument against Slavery 120

6 Consider the Audience: Witnessing to the Discursive Reader in Douglass's Narrative 151.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 191-199) and index.

ISBN:

0814756042

0814756050

OCLC:

47044779