LITR 5731 Seminar in Multicultural Literature
American Minority Literature
Lecture Notes
Ryan's discussion question:
Describe the style of Equiano and Douglass.
Note the careful, restrained nature of their writing, even when dealing with intensely personal, emotional experiences.
How does each author balance Enlightenment-style reason and coolness
with passion and occasional reaches into sublime / spiritual heights?
Instructor's Discussion Questions:
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Is "the Dream" (obj. 3a) a discernible narrative pattern? Identify elements in examples, esp. Douglass's speech by the Chesapeake Bay (chapter 10). What about actual dreams in Equiano and elsewhere?
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How do slave narratives exemplify the minority narrative (obj. 1a)? How different from the immigrant / American Dream story?
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Both Douglass and Equiano come from pre-literate, traditional, rural cultures, but are desperate to learn literacy, change their condition, and visit cities. Identify these contrasting elements. Literary significance of literacy? Culture studies?
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Douglass's Narrative is widely considered the greatest slave narrative and a classic text of American literature. What literary qualities can be identified for this distinction?
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How do Douglass’s language and culture/style swing from mainstream to minority?
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Equiano visited mainland English colonies only once (Philadelphia), otherwise a Caribbean slave; narrative published London 1789 (year of US Constitution). How is his experience more typical of a Caribbean slave than a southern US slave?
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Is "the Dream" (obj. 3a) a discernible narrative pattern? Identify elements in examples, esp. Douglass's speech by the Chesapeake Bay (chapter 10). What about actual dreams in Equiano and elsewhere?
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Equiano visited mainland English colonies only once (Philadelphia), otherwise a Caribbean slave; narrative published London 1789 (year of US Constitution). How is his experience more typical of a Caribbean slave than a southern US slave?
Equiano more servant than slave?
Further south in African diaspora, b&w ratios change
Not exclusively field hands or house servants but also sailors, business people, independent wives (also somewhat true in US: Sandy’s wife, Jacobs’s father)
slave narratives as literature
Among most original genres of American literature
hundreds written before Civil War, plus more afterward
Douglass's Narrative widely recognized as neglected American classic
increasingly taught in high schools, standard college reading lists
Equiano and Jacobs also widely respected: selections in American literature anthologies
How much about literature, how much about culture?
No problem with my generation, highly politicized by Civil Rights & Vietnam
But generations before and after may regard Literature more transcendentally, or separate from culture
Before 1970s, slave narratives would be in domain of History rather than Literature
But Douglass and Jacobs also appear in American Romanticism
Plus literacy issues
continue slave narratives
Questions or topics:
How are the slave narratives like a "creation story" or "origins story" for African America?
What image of Africa results from Equiano's story?
definition of Origin or Creation Stories
Andrew O. Wiget, "Native American Oral Narrative" in The Heath Anthology of American Literature 3rd edn., v. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 24-27.
Origin and Emergence stories are complex symbolic tales that typically dramatize the tribal explanation of the origin of the earth and its people; establish the central relationships among people, the cosmos or universe, and the other creatures (flora and fauna) of the earth; distinguish gender roles and social organization for the tribe . . . .
Significance of origin / creation stories:
Compare culture wars over whether to reach Darwinian evolution or Creation from Genesis in Bible
In choice, many issues and attitudes at stake regarding nature of humanity, social and gender relations, relations to nature . . . .
Origin stories as powerful appeal in argumentation
Questions or comments concerning development of literacy?
1d. “The Color Code”
Literature represents the extremely sensitive subject of skin color infrequently or indirectly. Generally western civilization transfers the values it associates with “light and dark”—e. g., good & evil, rational / irrational—to people of light or dark complexions, with huge implications for power, validity, sexuality, etc. (But see objective 4 regarding “the New American” & racial ideology and practice.)
408 “You yellow devil! . . . long-legged mulatto devil.” 309
+ skin color
E 71 washing face (44)
E 37 complexion, all ideas are relative (17)
D 342 few shades darker, very different looking class 257
Slave Narratives: Romance & Reality
Career as teacher, reader of literature: not just one book at a time, but keeping all your books open at once
inter-textuality, dialogue of writers with readers and other writers
Unify materials
Historical unity: Race + class + gender, alliances of
identity or ideology
Formal unity: all share same language, common references
chiasmus
4.2-4.5 chiasmus
metaphor
FD 5.9 white face, kindly emotions
FD 6.1 by trade a weaver [class]
FD 7.6-7 anti-slavery + Catholic emancipation
HJ 6.20 w/ jealous mistress
11.8 civil disobedience
Fuller 27, 29 4, 7, 16 (limits), 25 (expansion), 27, 29
FD [10D.8] I felt as I never felt before. It was
a glorious resurrection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of freedom.
My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice departed, bold defiance took its
place; and I now resolved that, however long I might remain a slave in form,
the day had passed forever when I could be a slave in fact.
FD 1.11
blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery
11.23-29 New Bedford
styles of language cross cultural lines
so can law
FD 4.8, 4.9
HJ 1.7 cf. MF 18
MF 28 one law for all souls
MF 19 Private action
HJ 5.4 no shadow of law
5.9 grandmother's influence
so do human genes
one language, same human race
HJ 1.2, 1.3, 1.6; 14.1
FD
1.2-3
10H.6
1.3 father
white man,
whispered
1.3 part mothers from children, blunt and destroy natural
affection
1.4 see me in the night
1.5 profitable as well as pleasurable
1.7 very different-looking class of people
1.11
blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery
2.4 night as slave’s time
2.7, 2.11 double language
3.1-2 garden excludes slaves
3.5 never utter a word
3.7 penalty of telling the truth
4.2-4.5 chiasmus
5.3 evolutionary / capitalist metaphor
5.9 white face, kindly emotions
6.1 by trade a weaver [class]
6.5 literacy, white man’s power to enslave black man
6.6 chiasmus
6.7 city over town, anti-romance
7.2 slavery as injurious to her
7.3 slavery and education incompatible
7.5 bread of knowledge
7.6-7 anti-slavery + Catholic emancipation
7.8 slavers as
robbers, gone to
7.11 Irishmen
7.13 copy-book as board fence
8.2 all ranked together
8.9 brandy and slavery
8.11 knowledge to run away
9.2 Methodist
camp meeting, 2nd
Great Awakening
9.4 learn to read New Testament, broke up
9.7 Covey a professor of religion
10A.1 Covey as “the snake” + 2 power to deceive
10B.2 cf. Emerson
10C.1 chiasmus
10D.
10D.7 turning point in career as slave
10D.8 glorious resurrection from tomb of slavery
10E slaves’ holidays
10E.3 vicious dissipation
10F.2 no pretensions to religion; religion of the south
10G.1
10G.3 society of my fellow-slaves
10G.7 Patrick Henry, liberty or death
10H.5 cf. law enforcement
10H.6 yellow mulatto devil
10H.10 slave traders as pirates
10H.13 stone
prison to
10i.3 class / race conflict
10i.7 Mrs. Auld
10J.3 money to master
11.3 underground railroad
11.5 continued to think
11.7 camp meeting
11.8 civil disobedience
11.13 leave escape unexplained
11.18 marriage ceremony
11.22 change my name
11.23 absence of slaves > wealth
11.28 starting point of new existence
A.2 slaveholding religion