Discourses of Slavery and Abolition Britain and its Colonies, 1760-1838

by Carey, Brycchan; Ellis, Markman; Salih, Sara

• ISBN13: 9781403916471
• ISBN10: 1403916470
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-04
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Discourses of Slavery and Abolitionbrings together for the first time the most important strands of current thinking on the relationship between slavery and categories of writing, oratory and visual culture in the "long" eighteenth century. The book begins by examining writing about slavery and race by both philosophers and by authors such as Aphra Behn. It considers self-representation in the works of Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, James Williams and Mary Prince. The final section reads literary and cultural texts associated with the abolition movements of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, moving beyond traditional accounts of the documents of that movement to show the importance of religious writing, children's literature, and the relationship between art and abolition.

Author Biography

Brycchan Carey is a Lecturer in English Literature, Kingston University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	viii
Notes on Contributors	ix
Introduction	1	(8)
Brycchan Carey
Sara Salih
Part I Discourses of Slavery	9	(70)
`Candid Reflections': The Idea of Race in the Debate over the Slave Trade and Slavery in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century	11	(15)
Peter Kitson
Abolishing Romance: Representing Rape in Oroonoko	26	(19)
Sue Wiseman
`Incessant Labour': Georgic Poetry and the Problem of Slavery	45	(18)
Markman Ellis
Sensibility, Tropical Disease, and the Eighteenth-Century Sentimental Novel	63	(16)
Candace Ward
Part II Slavery from Within	79	(60)
`The Hellish Means of Killing and Kidnapping': Ignatius Sancho and the Campaign against the `Abominable Traffic for Slaves'	81	(15)
Brycchan Carey
Who's Afraid of Cannibals? Some Uses of the Cannibalism Trope in Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative	96	(12)
Mark Stein
`From His Own Lips': The Politics of Authenticity in A Narrative of Events since the First of August, 1834, by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica	108	(15)
Diana Paton
The History of Mary Prince, the Black Subject, and the Black Canon	123	(16)
Sara Salih
Part III Discourses of Abolition	139	(84)
Henry Smeathman, the Fly-Catching Abolitionist	141	(17)
Deirdre Coleman
Sentiment, Politics, and Empire: A Study of Beilby Porteus's Anti-Slavery Sermon	158	(17)
Bob Tennant
Slavery, Abolition, and the Nation in Priscilla Wakefield's Tour Books for Children	175	(19)
Johanna M. Smith
Questioning the `Necessary Order of Things': Maria Edgeworth's `The Grateful Negro', Plantation Slavery, and the Abolition of the Slave Trade	194	(15)
Frances R. Botkin
Turner's The Slave Ship (1840): Towards a Dialectical History Painting	209	(14)
Leo Costello
Bibliography	223	(6)
Index	229