Impossible witnesses
Subtitle: truth, abolitionism, and slave testimony
By: Dwight A. McBride.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 205
Subjects: American prose literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism; Antislavery movements -- United States -- History -- 19th century; American prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Slaves -- United States -- Biography -- History and criticism; African Americans -- Biography -- History and criticism; African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 19th century; Slaves' writings, American -- History and criticism; Slaves -- United States -- Intellectual life; Autobiography -- African American authors; African Americans in literature; Slavery in literature
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-199) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Acknowledgments xi; title: Introduction: Bearing Witness: Memory, Theatricality,; title: the Body, and Slave Testimony 1; title: Abolitionist Discourse: A Transatlantic Context 16; title: Abolitionist Discourse and Romanticism 21; title: Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in England 25; title: African Humanity and the Possibility of Rage in Edgeworth,; title: Cowper, and Opie 42; title: On Whiteness and Humanity: The Example of Blake's; title: "The Little Black Boy" 59; title: Reflections on Abolitionist Discourse in the U.S. 62; title: Emerson and the Fugitive Slave Law Toward a Theory; title: of Whiteness 67; title: Troping the Slave: Margaret Fuller's Review of Douglasss; title: Na,atie 75; title: The Body as Evidence: Garrison's Defense of David; title: Walker's Appeal 78; title: 'I Know What a Slave Knows": Mary Prince as Witness, or; title: the Rhetorical Uses of Experience 85; title: Appropriating the Word: Phillis Wheatley, Religious; title: Rhetoric, and the Poetics of Liberation lo3; title: Speaking as "the African": Olaudah Equiano's Moral; title: Argument against Slavery 120; title: Consider the Audience: Witnessing to the Discursive; title: i Reader in Douglass's Narmrative 151; title: Afterword 173; title: 191; title: "Notes 177; title: Index 201; title: About the Author 207.