The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature

Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-04876-8 - Slavery in American Literature Edited by Ezra Tawil Frontmatter More information

the cambridge companion to slavery in american literature

The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature brings together leading scholars to examine the signiﬁcance of slavery in American literature from the eighteenth century to the present day. In addition to stressing how slavery has been central to the study of American culture, this Companion provides students with a broad introduction to an impressive range of authors including Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Toni Morrison. Accessible to students and academics alike, this Companion surveys the critical landscape of a major ﬁeld and lays the foundation for future studies.

Ezra Tawil is Associate Professor of English at the University of Rochester. He is the author of The Making of Racial Sentiment: Slavery and the Birth of the Frontier Romance (Cambridge, 2006) and the author of numerous essays in such journals as Novel, Early American Literature, and Diaspora. He is currently completing a book entitled The American Style: Literary Exceptionalism and Transatlantic Culture.

CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS TO LITERATURE

THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO SLAVERY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE

edited by EZRA TAWIL University of Rochester

32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107625983 © Cambridge University Press 2016 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2016 Printed in the United States of America A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Tawil, Ezra F., 1967– editor. The Cambridge companion to slavery in American literature / [edited by] Ezra Tawil. New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Series: Cambridge companions to literature | Includes bibliographical references and index. LCCN 2015040752 | ISBN 9781107048768 (hardback) LCSH: Slavery in literature. | American literature – History and criticism. LCC PS169.S47 C36 2016 | DDC 810.9/3552–dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040752 isbn 978-1-107-04876-8 Hardback isbn 978-1-107-62598-3 Paperback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

CONTENTS

List of Figures page ix List of Contributors xi Timeline xv

Introduction 1 ezra tawil

1 Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Literary Imagination 16 philip gould

2 U.S. Antislavery Tracts and the Literary Imagination 32 teresa a. goddu

3 White Slaves in the Late-Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century American Literary Imagination 55 joe shapiro

4 Slave Narratives as Literature 70 sarah meer

5 Slavery and the Emergence of the African American Novel 86 john c. havard

6 Proslavery Fiction 100 gavin jones and judith richardson

7 The Poetry of Slavery 115 meredith l. mcgill

vii

contents

8 Reading Slavery and “Classic” American Literature 137 robert s. levine

9 Slavery’s Performance-Texts 153 douglas a. jones, jr.

10 The Music and the Musical Inheritance of Slavery 169 radiclani clytus

11 U.S. Slave Revolutions in Atlantic World Literature 186 paul giles

12 Slavery and American Literature 1900–1945 204 tim armstrong

13 Moving Pictures: Spectacles of Enslavement in American Cinema 219 sharon willis

14 Slavery and Historical Memory in Late-Twentieth-Century Fiction 236 ashraf h.a. rushdy

15 Beyond the Borders of the Neo-Slave Narrative: Science Fiction and Fantasy 250 jeffrey allen tucker

Guide to Further Reading 265 Index 271

viii

FIGURES

1. Detail of Stowage of the British Slave Ship “Brookes” under the Regulated Slave Trade, Act of 1788 (1788?). page 33 2. Josiah Wedgwood, “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?,” Antislavery medallion (England, 1787). 34 3. “A Slave Plantation.” George Bourne, Picture of Slavery in the United States of America (1834), 100a. 38 4. “The Booroom Slave.” Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), frontispiece. 45 5. “The Kneeling Slave.” Lydia Maria Child, The Fountain, for Every Day in the Year (1836), frontispiece. 47 6. “African Mother on a Rock.” Lydia Maria Child, The Oasis (1834), 28b. 49 7. “Kneeling Children.” Lydia Maria Child, The Oasis (1834), 20. 51 8. Hiram Powers, “The Greek Slave” (1843). 56 9. Ira Aldridge as Mungo in “The Padlock.” 157

CONTRIBUTORS

tim armstrong is Professor of Modern English and American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Modernism, Technology and the Body: A Cultural Study (1998); Haunted Hardy: Poetry, History, Memory (2000); Modernism: A Cultural History (2005); and The Logic of Slavery: Debt, Technology, and Pain in American Literature (2012).

radiclani clytus is Assistant Professor of English and American Studies at Brown University, specializing in nineteenth-century (African) American cultural productions. His forthcoming book, Graphic Slavery: American Abolitionism and the Primacy of the Visual, examines t