The Origins of African American Literature, 1680-1865

Dickson D. Bruce

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780813921938
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

From the earliest texts of the colonial period to works contemporary with Emancipation, African American literature has been a dialogue across color lines, and a medium through which black writers have been able to exert considerable authority on both sides of that racial demarcation.

Dickson D. Bruce argues that contrary to prevailing perceptions of African American voices as silenced and excluded from American history, those voices were loud and clear. Within the context of the wider culture, these writers offered powerful, widely read, and widely appreciated commentaries on American ideals and ambitions. The Origins of African American Literature provides strong evidence to demonstrate just how much writers engaged in a surprising number of dialogues with society as a whole.

Along with an extensive discussion of major authors and texts, including Phillis Wheatley's poetry, Frederick Douglass's Narrative, Harriet Jacobs' Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and Martin Delany's Blake, Bruce explores less-prominent works and writers as well, thereby grounding African American writing in its changing historical settings. The Origins of African American Literature is an invaluable revelation of the emergence and sources of the specifically African American literary tradition and the forces that helped shape it.

Index

Abolition Intelligencer, 169

Abolitionist, 237

abolition movement: as community of “respectability,” 195, 212, 213, 231–32; as discursive community, 194–95, 201, 208–10, 223–24, 232–34; as moral community, 215–16, 218–20, 227–28, 245, 260, 296; racial dynamics of, 211–16, 218–20, 223–26, 233–34, 251, 256–57, 260, 267–68, 277–78; racial tensions in, 223, 233, 255–57, 260, 268; significance of African American voice in, 220–27, 233–38, 256, 258–60, 273–74

Abraham (biblical patriarch), 122, 125

Abzug, Robert, 185

Ada. See Forten, Sarah

Adahoonzou, King of Dahomey (pseud.?), 71

Adams, John, 45

Adams, Nehemiah, 280, 285, 289; A South-Side View of Slavery, 275

“Address to the Free People of Colour of the United States,” 178

“Address to the Heart, on the Subject of Slavery,” 66

“Address to the humane and benevolent Inhabitants of the city and county of Philadelphia,” 141, 145

Africa: ancient, 12, 82–83, 121–25, 154–55, 167–68, 180, 205–6, 217, 229–30, 310–11; corruption of, 119–20, 133; cultural traditions of, in America, 5–7, 10; images of, 2, 25, 27, 57–61, 87–88 (see also exoticism; primitivism) African Church (New York), 122

African Civilization Society, 271

African Free School (New York), 99, 107, 119

African Institution (England), 129

African Masonic Lodge (Boston), 82–83, 128

African Meeting House (Boston), 109

African Methodist Episcopal Church, 116, 126–27, 144, 235, 304, 306

African nobility, stories of, 19, 25, 42, 86–87, 88, 89, 121

African Ob...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Background to an African American Literature, 1680–1760
• The Age of Revolution, 1760–1800
• Literary Identity in the New Nation, 1800–1816
• The Era of Colonization, 1816–1828
• The Liberator and the Shaping of African American Tradition, 1829–1832
• Literary Expression in the Age of Abolitionism, 1833–1849
• African American Voices in the American Crisis, 1850–1861
• The War for Emancipation and Beyond
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index