The Cambridge Companion to Slavery in American Literature

This book brings together leading scholars to examine slavery in American literature from the eighteenth century to the present day.

Ezra Tawil (Edited by)

9781107625983, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 29 March 2016

301 pages, 9 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

'In putting together the collection, Tawil aims for the unification of the aesthetic and historical, and in many ways he succeeds. … this collection is diverse in outlook and worthy of consideration.' A. S. Newson-Horst, Choice

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 central slavery has been 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 foundations for future studies.

Introduction Ezra Tawil
1. Slavery in the eighteenth-century literary imagination Philip Gould
2. US antislavery tracts and the literary imagination Teresa A. Goddu
3. White slaves in the late-eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literary imagination Joe Shapiro
4. Slave narratives as literature Sarah Meer
5. Slavery and the emergence of the African American novel John C. Havard
6. Proslavery fiction Gavin Jones and Judith Richardson
7. The poetry of slavery Meredith L. McGill
8. Reading slavery and 'classic' American literature Robert S. Levine
9. Slavery's performance-texts Douglas A. Jones, Jr
10. The music and the musical inheritance of slavery Radiclani Clytus
11. US slave revolutions in Atlantic world literature Paul Giles
12. Slavery and American literature 1900–45 Tim Armstrong
13. Moving pictures: spectacles of enslavement in American cinema Sharon Willis
14. Slavery and historical memory in late-twentieth-century fiction Ashraf H. A. Rushdy
15. Beyond the borders of the neo-slave narrative: science fiction and fantasy Jeffrey Allen Tucker.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature: history & criticism [DS]