Spiritual interrogations : culture, gender, and community in early African American women's writing / Katherine Clay Bassard.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bassard, Katherine Clay, 1959-

Series:

Princeton studies in culture/power/history.

Princeton studies in culture/power/history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

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

Christianity and literature--United States--History.

Christianity and literature.

Women and literature--United States--History.

Women and literature.

Spirituals (Songs)--History and criticism.

Spirituals (Songs).

African American women--Religious life.

African American women.

African American women in literature.

Community life in literature.

Spiritual life in literature.

Religion and literature.

Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784--Religion.

Wheatley, Phillis.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (194 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c1999.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

The late eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. The formation of an early African American community, bound together by shared experiences and spiritual values, owed much to these women's voices. The significance of their writings would be profound for all African Americans' sense of their own identity as a people. Katherine Clay Bassard's book is the first detailed account of pre-Emancipation writings from the period of 1760 to 1863, in light of a developing African American religious culture and emerging free black communities. Her study--which examines the relationship among race, culture, and community--focuses on four women: the poet Phillis Wheatley and poet and essayist Ann Plato, both Congregationalists; and the itinerant preacher Jarena Lee, and Shaker eldress Rebecca Cox Jackson, who, with Lee, had connections with African Methodism. Together, these women drew on what Bassard calls a "spirituals matrix," which transformed existing literary genres to accommodate the spiritual music and sacred rituals tied to the African diaspora. Bassard's important illumination of these writers resurrects their path-breaking work. They were cocreators, with all black women who followed, of African American intellectual life.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. The Daughters' Arrival: Histories, Theories, Vernaculars

Chapter Two. Diaspora Subjectivity and Transatlantic Crossings: Phillis Wheatley's Poetics of Recovery

Chapter Three. "The Too Advent'rous Strain": Slavery, Conversion, and Poetic Empowerment in Phillis Wheatley's Elegies

Chapter Four. "Social Piety" in Ann Plato's Essays

Chapter Five. "I Took a Text": Itinerancy, Community, and Intertextuality in Jarena Lee's Spiritual Narratives

Chapter Six. Rituals of Desire: Spirit, Culture, and Sexuality in the Writings of Rebecca Cox Jackson

Chapter Seven. Performing Community: Culture, Community, and African American Subjectivity before Emancipation

Afterword. The Sacred Subject

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [165]-175) and index.

ISBN:

9786612753442

9781400815043

1400815045

9781282753440

1282753444

9781400822591

1400822599

OCLC:

705527033