Voices of the Fugitives - Runaway Slave Stories and Their Fictions of Self-Creation

African American fugitive slave narratives are receiving growing amounts of attention for their literary and historical value. This book examines the techniques the slave narrative writers used to authorize and rhetorically create themselves in their writings. By examining such issues as voice and identity formation, the volume demonstrates how identity may be seen as a cultural fabrication. Former slave narrators used a series of masking and doubling techniques to address their experiences as African Americans. This book crosses the boundaries between literary criticism and historical study by examining the tensions between generic conventions and the impulses that created and reinforced them.

The introduction and opening chapter offer clear and accessible discussions of the social, political, cultural, and literary conditions influencing the slave narrative genre. Subsequent chapters are built on this theoretical framework and present close analytical readings of The Confessions of Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass's Narrative and My Bondage and My Freedom, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom, by William and Ellen Craft. The volume probingly traces the relationship between rhetorical self-creation and social ideology to show how that relationship was mediated within the fugitive slave narrative genre.

List of contents

Preface
Reading in the Breach
The Call: The Literary and Cultural Landscape
Let the World Dream Otherwise: The Literary Masks of Fugitive Slave Stories
Dismantling the Master's House: The Cultural Context
.and the Response: Speaking for Themselves
"Behold a Man Transformed": Sacred Language and the Secular Self in Frederick Douglass's Narrative
Authority, Power, and Determination of the Will: The Dilemma of Rhetorical Ownership in Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom and Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Ambiguity, Passing, and the Politics of Color: The Reconstruction of Race in William and Ellen Craft's Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom
Epilogue: Of Being and Nothingness: Caliban's Reprise
References
Index

About the author

STERLING LECATER BLAND, JR. is Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Product details

• Authors: Sterling Lecater Bland, Bland Sterling Lecater
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.07.2000
• EAN: 9780313311697
• ISBN: 978-0-313-31169-7
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; USA, Ethnic Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / 19th Century, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, American English, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, United States of America, USA, Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers, Slavery & abolition of slavery, Literary studies: c 1600 to c 1800, Black & Asian Studies, C 1700 To C 1800, Slavery and abolition of slavery, LITERARY CRITICISM / Novel as Form, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General, Race and Ethnicity: African American Studies