Book contents
- A History of the Literature of the U.S. South
- A History of the Literature of the U.S. South
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Fictions of the Native South
- Chapter 2 John Smith and the English Origins of Southern Exceptionalism
- Chapter 3 Plantation and Enlightenment
- Chapter 4 Geoconfederacy
- Chapter 5 In the Shadow of His Office
- Chapter 6 Shadows of Haiti
- Chapter 7 “Midnight Bakings” Amid Starvation
- Chapter 8 A Calculated Fiction
- Chapter 9 Maroons and Marronage in Antebellum African American Literature
- Chapter 10 Everyday Literary Culture in the Nineteenth Century
- Chapter 11 Fables of the Bloody Shirt
- Chapter 12 A Heritage Unique in the Ages
- Chapter 13 Moonlight and Magnolias No More
- Chapter 14 Women Writers and the Southern Renaissance; or, the Work of Gender in Literary Periodization
- Chapter 15 Southern Geographies and New Negro Modernism
- Chapter 16 “A fine loud grabble and snatch of AAA and WPA”
- Chapter 17 Provincialism as a Positive Good
- Chapter 18 Faulkner’s Untimely Fiction
- Chapter 19 Reconsidering Du Bois’s “Central Text”
- Chapter 20 Cultural Activism and Theater of the Civil Rights Movement
- Chapter 21 Till the Hurt Becomes Music
- Chapter 22 Undead Sound
- Chapter 23 There Is No South
- Chapter 24 Hurricane Alley
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - “Midnight Bakings” Amid Starvation
Food and Aesthetics in the Slave Narrative
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 April 2021
- A History of the Literature of the U.S. South
- A History of the Literature of the U.S. South
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Fictions of the Native South
- Chapter 2 John Smith and the English Origins of Southern Exceptionalism
- Chapter 3 Plantation and Enlightenment
- Chapter 4 Geoconfederacy
- Chapter 5 In the Shadow of His Office
- Chapter 6 Shadows of Haiti
- Chapter 7 “Midnight Bakings” Amid Starvation
- Chapter 8 A Calculated Fiction
- Chapter 9 Maroons and Marronage in Antebellum African American Literature
- Chapter 10 Everyday Literary Culture in the Nineteenth Century
- Chapter 11 Fables of the Bloody Shirt
- Chapter 12 A Heritage Unique in the Ages
- Chapter 13 Moonlight and Magnolias No More
- Chapter 14 Women Writers and the Southern Renaissance; or, the Work of Gender in Literary Periodization
- Chapter 15 Southern Geographies and New Negro Modernism
- Chapter 16 “A fine loud grabble and snatch of AAA and WPA”
- Chapter 17 Provincialism as a Positive Good
- Chapter 18 Faulkner’s Untimely Fiction
- Chapter 19 Reconsidering Du Bois’s “Central Text”
- Chapter 20 Cultural Activism and Theater of the Civil Rights Movement
- Chapter 21 Till the Hurt Becomes Music
- Chapter 22 Undead Sound
- Chapter 23 There Is No South
- Chapter 24 Hurricane Alley
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This essay explores how writers of the slave narrative, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, use food to communicate the horrors of slavery, relay sensory experiences, and highlight acts of resistance. The essay further argues that Douglass and Jacobs use food imagery and metaphor creatively and in doing so, establish their own literary prowess. Following the developing field of literary food studies, this essay first makes a case for the importance of examining food within genre more broadly, and likewise argues for the literariness of the slave genre, as well as its firm position within the American literary canon. Finally, this essay briefly links Douglass and Jacobs to contemporary African American memoir by tracing how food continues to appear as a vehicle through which writers discuss white supremacy, economic and physical exploitation, and black empowerment within American society.
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- A History of the Literature of the U.S. South , pp. 126 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021