Genius in Bondage

by Carretta, Vincent; Gould, Philip

• ISBN13: 9780813122038
• ISBN10: 0813122031
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-09
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kentucky

Summary

Until fairly recently, critical studies and anthologies of African American literature generally began with the 1830s and 1840s. Yet there was an active and lively transatlantic black literary tradition as early as the 1760s. Genius in Bondage situates this literature in its own historical terms, rather than treating it as a sort of prologue to later African American writings. The contributors address the shifting meanings of race and gender during this period, explore how black identity was cultivated within a capitalist economy, discuss the impact of Christian religion and the Enlightenment on definitions of freedom and liberty, and identify ways in which black literature both engaged with and rebelled against Anglo-American culture.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	vi
Introduction	1	(16)
Vincent Carretta
Philip Gould
Part One ``Race'' and ``Gender'' in the Early Black Atlantic
``Betrayed by Some of My Own Complexion'': Cugoano, Abolition, and the Contemporary Language of Racialism	17	(22)
Roxann Wheeler
Race, Redemption, and Captivity in the Narratives of Briton Hammon and John Marrant	39	(15)
Karen A. Weyler
Being a Man: Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho	54	(18)
Felicity A. Nussbaum
Volatile Subjects: The History of Mary Prince	72	(17)
Gillian Whitlock
Part Two Market Culture and Racial Authority
Letters of the Old Calibar Slave Trade, 1760--1789	89	(27)
Paul E. Lovejoy
David Richardson
``Remarkable Liberty'': Language and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Black Autobiography	116	(14)
Philip Gould
``Property of Author'': Olaudah Equiano's Place in the History of the Book	130	(23)
Vincent Carretta
Part Three Language and the ``Other'': The Question of Difference
``Surprizing Deliverance''?: Slavery and Freedom, Language, and Identity in the Narrative of Briton Hammon, ``A Negro Man''	153	(22)
Robert Desrochers Jr.
On Her Own Footing: Phillis Wheatley in Freedom	175	(15)
Frank Shuffelton
``Thou Hast the Holy Word'': Jupiter Hammon's ``Regards'' to Phillis Wheatley	190	(9)
Rosemary Fithian Guruswamy
Ignatius Sancho's Letters: Sentimental Libertinism and the Politics of Form	199	(19)
Markman Ellis
Benjamin Banneker's Revision of Thomas Jefferson: Conscience Versus Science in the Early American Antislavery Debate	218	(24)
William L. Andrews
Fifth of July: Nathaniel Paul and the Construction of Black Nationalism	242
Robert S. Levine