Authors

Lenora Warren

Files

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Publication Date

2019

Description

Lenora Warren tells a new story about the troubled history of abolition and slave violence by examining representations of shipboard mutiny and insurrection in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Anglo-American and American literature. Fire on the Water centers on five black sailors, whose experiences of slavery and insurrection either inspired or found resonance within fiction: Olaudah Equiano, Denmark Vesey, Joseph Cinqué, Madison Washington, and Washington Goode. These stories of sailors, both real and fictional, reveal how the history of mutiny and insurrection is both shaped by, and resistant to, the prevailing abolitionist rhetoric surrounding the efficacy of armed rebellion as a response to slavery. Pairing well-known texts with lesser-known figures (Billy Budd and Washington Goode) and well-known figures with lesser-known texts (Denmark Vesey and the work of John Howison), this book reveals the richness of literary engagement with the politics of slave violence.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Keywords

History: US, American Studies, African American Studies, Literary Studies, 18th Century Studies, History: World, Caribbean Studies, Slavery, Maritime History

Rights

Copyright © 2019 by Lenora Warren All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. Please contact Hildreth-Mirza Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA 17837-2005.

Type

text; 182 pages

Language

eng

ISBN

9781684480210; eISBN; PDF

Fire on the Water : Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature, 1789-1886

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