Formations of African American Literature
This era spans the period of the first documented arrival of enslaved Africans to the colonies in 1619 to the end of the Civil War. This period evidences the contributions of African Americans to American literature, especially to the genres of romanticism and gothic literature, and the formations of literary traditions that are the unique products of African American culture. When conducting literary criticism of the period, it is necessary to consider that literacy in general was extremely limited; most people's literacy skills were based in Biblical instruction, public education was not widespread, and teaching an enslaved person to read or write was illegal in many states. Important topics in literature include the influences of African heritage and efforts to define American values. Many of the major issues in literary analysis of this time are still relevant today, such as debates about authenticity in African American literature and marketing African American authors to mainstream audiences.
Key Concepts
African American English is the culturally distinct elements of African American speakers of American English. This language variety or vernacular has its roots in the languages predominantly spoken by enslaved Africans brought to the United States. It continues to function as a distinct form of cultural communication today. As knowledge of the English language was severely restricted by social proximity for enslaved and free Black people, command of standard English served as a strong indicator of an African American's status. Representation of African Americans' speech is a strongly contested and essential subject in African American American literary criticism.
Slave narratives are stories by or about enslaved people's experiences living under slavery. These can be fictional or nonfiction. Many of these were published in parts by abolitionist perioidcals before their full release in book form. While some of these are valuable primary sources, others were heavily edited or fictionalized to function as abolitionist propaganda. Early narratives use violence to evidence the moral wrongs of slavery. Neo-slave narratives focus on the psychological trauma of enslavement. A factor which contributes to these stories rhetorical strength is their ability to reformat the genre of captivity narratives by American colonists to compare conditions of bondage and enslavement in a defining era of democratic principles. Themes of explorations of the meanings of slavery and freedom feature prominently.
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African diaspora
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Africanism
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literacy
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oral tradition
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sociolinguistics
Representative Texts
Gullah Folktales from the Georgia Coast by ISBN: 9780820343556Publication Date: 2012Negro myths from the Georgia coast told in the vernacular.
A literate South: Reading before Emancipation by A pervasive assumption about the culture of the southern United States is that it is firmly rooted in an oral tradition, not a written one. Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy and reading in the American South before emancipation by shedding light on literature's importance in helping the South preserve tradition, develop southern vernacular, and form a cultural identity. Schweiger explains how the "universal truth" of literacy's incompatibility with slavery hid readers in this region from their society and beyond, and obscured a rich literate tradition.
Sociocultural and Historical Contexts of African American English by This volume, based on presentations at a 1998 state of the art conference at the University of Georgia, critically examines African American English (AAE) socially, culturally, historically, and educationally. It explores the relationship between AAE and other varieties of English (namely Southern White Vernaculars, Gullah, and Caribbean English creoles), language use in the African American community (e.g., Hip Hop, women's language, and directness), and application of our knowledge about AAE to issues in education (e.g., improving overall academic success).
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abolitionist writings
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authentication
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captivity narratives
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neo-slave narrative
- spiritual autobiography
Moses by Call Number: J 973.7 W362MDescribes Tubman's spiritual journey as she hears the voice of God guiding her north to freedom on that very first trip to escape the brutal practice of forced servitude. Tubman would make nineteen subsequent trips back south, never being caught, but none as profound as this first one.
Reading abolition : the critical reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass by Call Number: 810.935 Y66rHarriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass represent a crucial strand in nineteenth-century American literature: the struggle for the abolition of slavery. Yet there has been no thoroughgoing discussion of the critical reception of these two giants of abolitionist literature. Reading Abolition narrates and explores the parallels between Stowe's critical reception and Douglass's. The book begins with Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, considering its initial celebration as a work of genius and conscience, its subsequent dismissal in the early twentieth century as anti-Southern and in the mid-twentieth century as racially stereotypical, and finally its recent recovery as a classic of women's, religious, and political fiction. It also considers the reception of Stowe's other, less well-known novels, non-fictional works, and poetry, and how engaging the full Stowe canon has changed the shape of Stowe studies. The second half of the study deals with the reception of Douglass both as a writer of three autobiographies that helped to define the contours of African American autobiography for later writers and critics and as an extraordinarily eloquent and influential orator and journalist.
Slavery in Toni Morrison's Beloved by Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of Nobel Prize in Literature author, Toni Morrison.
Books
Media
