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SUGAR SLAVES from Jackie Kay's the Lamplighter to Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood

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SUGAR SLAVES from Jackie Kay's the Lamplighter to Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood Università degli Studi di Padova Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Lingue Moderne per la Comunicazione e la Cooperazione Internazionale Classe LM-38 Tesi di Laurea SUGAR SLAVES From Jackie Kay's The Lamplighter to Andrea Stuart's Sugar in the Blood Relatrice Laureanda Prof.ssa Annalisa Oboe Andrea Albertin n° matr.1180159 / LMLCC Anno Accademico 2018 / 2019 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................... 5 SLAVERY THROUGH HISTORY............................................................................................................... 11 1. Slavery in antiquity................................................................................................................... 11 2. Slavery in the Middle Ages ....................................................................................................... 19 3. Atlantic slavery ......................................................................................................................... 23 3.1 Atlantic slavery and the making of the modern world ................................................... 29 JACKIE KAY’S THE LAMPLIGHTER ......................................................................................................... 41 1. Jackie Kay .................................................................................................................................. 41 2. The Lamplighter........................................................................................................................ 42 2.1 The main voices ................................................................................................................ 46 2.2 Structure and style ........................................................................................................... 51 2.3 The issue of memory ........................................................................................................ 54 3. The issue of womanhood ......................................................................................................... 58 3.1 Abuse ................................................................................................................................ 59 3.2. Mothers, mothering, and motherhood ................................................................................ 62 4. Atlantic voyages ....................................................................................................................... 67 4.1 Africa ................................................................................................................................. 68 4.2 The Middle Passage .......................................................................................................... 72 4.3 A New World of work and violence ................................................................................. 78 5. Resistance ................................................................................................................................. 83 5.1 Daily resistance ................................................................................................................. 85 5.2 Runaway ........................................................................................................................... 87 5.3 Rebellion ........................................................................................................................... 89 5.4 Death................................................................................................................................. 92 6. Sugar ......................................................................................................................................... 93 1 SUGAR: A BITTER HISTORY FOR A SWEER COMMODITY .................................................................... 99 1. From honey to sugar .............................................................................................................. 101 2. Cultivation, refining process and usages ............................................................................... 107 3. How sugar changed the world ............................................................................................... 109 ANDREA STUART’S SUGAR IN THE BLOOD ........................................................................................ 111 1. Andrea Stuart ......................................................................................................................... 111 2. Sugar in the Blood .................................................................................................................. 114 2.1 The Story ......................................................................................................................... 117 2.2 A problem with the sources ........................................................................................... 126 2.3 Historical imbalances ..................................................................................................... 127 2.4 A mixed genealogy ......................................................................................................... 129 2.5 Sugar ............................................................................................................................... 132 2.6 Barbados and its society ................................................................................................ 135 2.7 The concept of family ..................................................................................................... 137 2.8 Beyond the family saga .................................................................................................. 139 2.9 Critical points in the book .............................................................................................. 140 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................................... 143 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 147 RIASSUNTO IN LINGUA ITALIANA ...................................................................................................... 155 2 “I do not know if coffee and sugar are essential to the happiness of Europe, but I know well that these two products have accounted for the unhappiness of two great regions of the world: America has been depopulated so as to have land on which to plant them; Africa has been depopulated so as to have the people to cultivate them.”1 1 Volume 1Bernardin de Saint Pierre Jacques-Henri, Voyage to Isle de France, Isle ,Be Bourbon, The Cape of Good Hope ... With New Observations on Nature and Mankind by an Officer of the King, Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2014. 3 4 INTRODUCTION Whenever we pour some sugar into our beverages we probably do not realise the history that lies behind that habitual gesture. Sugar has become so common today, that we take it for granted. Always present in our kitchens, we sometimes even abuse it. We are now slaves of its sweetness, and yet, its history is not sweet at all. This thesis is about this. It is about the millions of sugar slaves who were sacrificed to sweeten the world. In this dissertation, I analyse two literary works: The Lamplighter by the Scottish author Jackie Kay and Sugar in the Blood. A Family’s History of Slavery and Empire by the Barbadian author Andrea Stuart. Both of these works are ascribable to the literary subgenre of neo-slave narratives, contemporary works about slavery and the investigation of black subjectivity. The Lamplighter is fictional, but is nonetheless the product of an intense archival research. Sugar in the Blood is the true history of the author’s family, whose past is deeply immersed in slavery. This thesis is divided into three chapters. The first one aims at providing a generic historical background to slavery, an institution that has always existed, for it is as ancient as mankind. Therefore, in order to fully understand Atlantic slavery, I believe it is important to look further in the past, and see how various types of bondage have influenced and characterised different societies over the centuries. In this short historical excursus, I go over several ancient societies that have left records of having established some form of slavery. Starting from the Sumerians in 2000 BC, passing through Babylonia and Egypt, I arrive to the better known form of bondage that was developed in the Greek and Roman societies. After spending some time describing how slavery was characterised in the classical antiquity, I move on to discuss the main forms of bondage established throughout the Middle Ages, mainly slavery and serfdom. I describe these two forms, underlining similarities and differences and I also consider the role and position of Christianity regarding bondage. 5 Certainly, this very brief discussion of slavery throughout history does not claim to be either thorough or complete. Much more could be said about bondage in each period considered. But the aim of this brief analysis is to show that slavery has always existed, even long before the Atlantic slave trade, which is generally what we tend to think of when we hear the term slavery. I have thus pointed out other forms of bondage and compared them to the best known Atlantic slavery,
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