Impossible Witnesses [electronic resource] : Truth, Abolitionism, and Slave Testimony / Dwight A. McBride.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McBride, Dwight A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Slavery in literature.

African Americans in literature.

Autobiography--African American authors.

Autobiography.

Enslaved persons--United States--Intellectual life.

Enslaved persons.

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

Enslaved persons' writings, American.

African Americans--Intellectual life--19th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Biography--History and criticism.

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

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

American prose literature.

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

Antislavery movements.

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

Physical Description:

1 online resource (223 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York ; London : New York University Press, [2001]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Even the most cursory review of black literary production during the nineteenth century indicates that its primary concerns were the issues of slavery, racial subjugation, abolitionist politics and liberation. How did the writers of these narratives ""bear witness"" to the experiences they describe? At a time when a hegemonic discourse on these subjects already existed, what did it mean to ""tell the truth"" about slavery?. Impossible Witnesses explores these questions through a study of fiction, poetry, essays, and slave narratives from the abolitionist era. Linking the racialized discourses

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Bearing Witness: Memory, Theatricality,

the Body, and Slave Testimony 1

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 Douglasss

Na,atie 75

The Body as Evidence: Garrison's Defense of David

Walker's Appeal 78

'I Know What a Slave Knows": Mary Prince as Witness, or

the Rhetorical Uses of Experience 85

Appropriating the Word: Phillis Wheatley, Religious

Rhetoric, and the Poetics of Liberation lo3

Speaking as "the African": Olaudah Equiano's Moral

Argument against Slavery 120

Consider the Audience: Witnessing to the Discursive

i Reader in Douglass's Narmrative 151

Afterword 173

191

"Notes 177

Index 201

About the Author 207.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

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

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-8147-5973-4

OCLC:

780425914