Hostname: page-component-cc8bf7c57-pd9xq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-11T22:15:35.857Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Novelization of Voice in Early African American Narrative

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

William L. Andrews
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the African American literary renaissance of the 1850s, the act of narrating was novelized in many slave narratives. But Frederick Douglass's Hemic Slave (1853) and William Wells Brown's Clotel: Or, The President's Daughter (1853) are particularly noteworthy because they assert the importance of the fictive to the representation of facts in ways that empower these texts as novels, not as autobiographies. Brown and Douglass problematize the relative status of the factual and the fictive in their texts in order to raise questions about the nature and source of authority in narrative. These texts suggest that authority is not an inherent part of narrative discourse (whether factual or fictive) but rather a function of discourses as facilitated by the narrating voice.

Type
Special Topic: African and African American Literature
Information
PMLA , Volume 105 , Issue 1: Special Millennium issue , January 1990 , pp. 23 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Andrews, William L. To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1986.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.10.5749/j.ctt22727z1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave. New York: Norton, 1973.Google Scholar
Bibb, Henry. Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself. New York, 1849.Google Scholar
Brown, Henry Box. Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written by Himself. Manchester: Lee and Glynn, 1851.Google Scholar
Brown, William Wells. Clotel: Or, The President's Daughter. New York: Macmillan, 1970.Google Scholar
Brown, William Wells. Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Ed. and introd. Gara, Larry. Reading, MA: Addison, 1969.Google Scholar
Davis, Lennard J. “A Social History of Fact and Fiction: Authorial Disavowal in the Early English Novel.” Literature and Society. Ed. Said, Edward. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. 120–48.Google Scholar
Delany, Martin R. Blake: Or, The Huts of America. Ed. Floyd J. Miller. Boston: Beacon, 1970.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. The Frederick Douglass Papers. Ed. John W. Blassingame. Series 1. 3 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1979–.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. “The Heroic Slave.” The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass. Ed. Foner, Philip S. Vol. 5. New York: International, 1975. 473–505.Google Scholar
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. Ed. Andrews, William L. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1987.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: McClurg, 1903.Google Scholar
Farrison, William Edward. William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1969.Google Scholar
Foley, Barbara. “History, Fiction, and the Ground Between: The Uses of the Documentary Mode in Black Literature.” PMLA 95 (1980): 389–403.10.2307/461880CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. Trans. Lewin, Jane E. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed. Jean Fagan Yellin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Jones, Howard. “The Peculiar Institution and National Honor: The Case of the Creole Slave Revolt.” Civil War History 21 (1975): 28–50.10.1353/cwh.1975.0036CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lane, Lunsford. The Narrative of Lunsford Lane. Boston: Torrey, 1842.Google Scholar
“Madison Washington: Another Chapter in His History.” Liberator 10 June 1842: 89.Google Scholar
Olney, James. “T Was Born': Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature.” The Slave's Narrative. Ed. Davis, Charles T. and Gates, Henry Louis Jr. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. 148–75.Google Scholar
Peabody, Ephraim. “Narratives of Fugitive Slaves.” Christian Examiner 47 (1849): 61–93.Google Scholar
Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada. New York: Avon, 1977.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnsteia On the Margins of Discourse. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.Google Scholar
Stepto, Robert B. From behind the Veil. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1979.Google Scholar
Stepto, Robert B. “Storytelling in Early Afro-American Fiction: Frederick Douglass' The Heroic Slave.” Georgia Review 36 (1982): 355–68.Google Scholar
Trilling, Lionel. Sincerity and Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971.Google Scholar
States, United. Senate. Senate Documents. 27th Cong., 2nd sess. No. 51. 1841–42.Google Scholar
Webb, Frank J. The Garies and Their Friends. London: Routledge, 1857.Google Scholar
Wellek, René, and Warren, Austin. Theory of Literature. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt, 1962.Google Scholar
White, Hayden. “The Fictions of Factual Representation.” Tropics of Discourse. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. 121–34.Google Scholar
Wilson, Harriet E. Our Nig: Or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Random, 1983.Google Scholar
Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Texts and Contexts of Harriet Jacobs' Incidentsin the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself.” The Slave's Narrative. Ed. Davis, Charles T. and Gates, Henry Louis Jr. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. 262–78.Google Scholar