Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture by Michaël Roy (review)

IF 0.3 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE, AMERICAN
Bryan Sinche
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Gabrielle Foreman, Frances Smith Foster, Eric Gardner, Leon Jackson, and Joycelyn Moody—along with the emergence of searchable digital databases—have helped inspire a flurry of scholarship that shows no signs of abating. To wit: Benjamin Fagan's <em>The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation</em> (U of Georgia P, 2016), Gardner's <em>Black Print Unbound</em> (Oxford UP, 2015), and Derrick Spires's <em>The Practice of Citizenship</em> (U of Pennsylvania P, 2019) have fueled an interest in Black newspapers and periodicals, and collections like <em>Early African American Print Culture</em> (ed. Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein [U of Pennsylvania P, 2012]), <em>The Colored Conventions Movement</em> (ed. Jim Casey, P. Gabrielle Foreman, and Sarah Patterson [U of North Carolina P, 2021]), and <em>Against a Sharp White Background</em> (Brigette Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne [U of Wisconsin P, 2019]) have further expanded our understanding of the genres and forms in which African American writing appeared. The effect of much of this work has been to reconsider the role of the slave narrative in pre-1900 African American literature. Michaël Roy's <em>Fugitive Texts</em>: <em>Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture</em> helps to further this critical project by attending to the materiality and diversity of antebellum narratives.</p> <p>Roy's monograph is a revised version of <em>Textes Fugitifs</em>, first published in France in 2017. The American edition, translated by Susan Pickford, <strong>[End Page 210]</strong> updates the scholarly apparatus, but it is largely unchanged from the 2017 publication that won the research prize of the Association Française D'Études Américaines. As Roy notes, his book fills a major gap in African American literary scholarship, as it is the first monograph focused on the printing, distribution, circulation, sale, and reception of the texts we have come to call \"slave narratives.\" Moreover, Roy complicates that term throughout <em>Fugitive Texts</em>, arguing that to understand the genre in all its complexity, we must attend to the narratives' publication histories. Roy argues that a \"book history approach to the antebellum slave narratives … illuminates the heterogenous nature of what is often perceived as a homogenous whole\" (9). Roy shapes his argument by focusing on two key factors: the decade during which a narrative was published and the mode of publication. As Roy explains, these factors are tightly correlated for narratives published during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and Roy's three chapters marry historical context to publishing case studies for each of those decades.</p> <p>Roy's first chapter attends to slave narratives published in the 1830s under the aegis (or with the support of) major abolitionist organizations, especially the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). As Roy notes, there were several slave narratives published in the United States before 1830, but all those narratives were self-published and, as such, circulated locally rather than nationally. The one exception to this pattern of circulation—David Walker's <em>Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World</em> (1829)—is not a slave narrative, and Walker's pamphlet relied on a unique distribution method (it was smuggled south by sailors) that was not viable for most authors or publishers. Even so, the hysteria generated by Walker's provocative pamphlet confirmed the power of print for newly formed abolitionist organizations, and in the mid- to late 1830s, the AASS sought to blanket the country with antislavery publications. As part of this campaign, the AASS decided to publish and distribute the <em>Narrative of James Williams</em> in 1838. Most criticism on Williams's <em>Narrative</em> has focused on the controversy generated by pro-slavery southerners who cast doubt on aspects of Williams's story and thereby undermined the political efficacy of his story, but Roy adds a crucial piece to the history of the <em>Narrative</em> by focusing on...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":44043,"journal":{"name":"EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eal.2024.a918925","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AMERICAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

  • Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture by Michaël Roy
  • Bryan Sinche (bio)
Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture
michaël roy; translated by susan pickford
University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
222 pp.

Following in the wake of scholarly leaders like I. Garland Penn, Dorothy Porter, and Marian Starling came a new generation of Black print culture specialists who have expanded and shaped the field. Articles and books by William L. Andrews, John Ernest, P. Gabrielle Foreman, Frances Smith Foster, Eric Gardner, Leon Jackson, and Joycelyn Moody—along with the emergence of searchable digital databases—have helped inspire a flurry of scholarship that shows no signs of abating. To wit: Benjamin Fagan's The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation (U of Georgia P, 2016), Gardner's Black Print Unbound (Oxford UP, 2015), and Derrick Spires's The Practice of Citizenship (U of Pennsylvania P, 2019) have fueled an interest in Black newspapers and periodicals, and collections like Early African American Print Culture (ed. Lara Langer Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein [U of Pennsylvania P, 2012]), The Colored Conventions Movement (ed. Jim Casey, P. Gabrielle Foreman, and Sarah Patterson [U of North Carolina P, 2021]), and Against a Sharp White Background (Brigette Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne [U of Wisconsin P, 2019]) have further expanded our understanding of the genres and forms in which African American writing appeared. The effect of much of this work has been to reconsider the role of the slave narrative in pre-1900 African American literature. Michaël Roy's Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture helps to further this critical project by attending to the materiality and diversity of antebellum narratives.

Roy's monograph is a revised version of Textes Fugitifs, first published in France in 2017. The American edition, translated by Susan Pickford, [End Page 210] updates the scholarly apparatus, but it is largely unchanged from the 2017 publication that won the research prize of the Association Française D'Études Américaines. As Roy notes, his book fills a major gap in African American literary scholarship, as it is the first monograph focused on the printing, distribution, circulation, sale, and reception of the texts we have come to call "slave narratives." Moreover, Roy complicates that term throughout Fugitive Texts, arguing that to understand the genre in all its complexity, we must attend to the narratives' publication histories. Roy argues that a "book history approach to the antebellum slave narratives … illuminates the heterogenous nature of what is often perceived as a homogenous whole" (9). Roy shapes his argument by focusing on two key factors: the decade during which a narrative was published and the mode of publication. As Roy explains, these factors are tightly correlated for narratives published during the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, and Roy's three chapters marry historical context to publishing case studies for each of those decades.

Roy's first chapter attends to slave narratives published in the 1830s under the aegis (or with the support of) major abolitionist organizations, especially the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). As Roy notes, there were several slave narratives published in the United States before 1830, but all those narratives were self-published and, as such, circulated locally rather than nationally. The one exception to this pattern of circulation—David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829)—is not a slave narrative, and Walker's pamphlet relied on a unique distribution method (it was smuggled south by sailors) that was not viable for most authors or publishers. Even so, the hysteria generated by Walker's provocative pamphlet confirmed the power of print for newly formed abolitionist organizations, and in the mid- to late 1830s, the AASS sought to blanket the country with antislavery publications. As part of this campaign, the AASS decided to publish and distribute the Narrative of James Williams in 1838. Most criticism on Williams's Narrative has focused on the controversy generated by pro-slavery southerners who cast doubt on aspects of Williams's story and thereby undermined the political efficacy of his story, but Roy adds a crucial piece to the history of the Narrative by focusing on...

逃亡文本:Michaël Roy 所著的《逃亡文本:前贝尔蒙时期印刷文化中的奴隶叙事》(评论)
以下是内容的简要摘录,以代替摘要:审稿人: 逃亡文本:作者:Michaël Roy Bryan Sinche(简历) 《逃亡文本:前贝鲁姆印刷文化中的奴隶叙事》(Fugitive Texts:米夏埃尔-罗伊;苏珊-皮克福德译 威斯康星大学出版社,2022 年 222 页。继 I. Garland Penn、Dorothy Porter 和 Marian Starling 等学术带头人之后,新一代黑人印刷文化专家的出现拓展并塑造了这一领域。威廉-安德鲁斯(William L. Andrews)、约翰-欧内斯特(John Ernest)、P-加布里埃尔-福尔曼(P. Gabrielle Foreman)、弗朗西斯-史密斯-福斯特(Frances Smith Foster)、埃里克-加德纳(Eric Gardner)、莱昂-杰克逊(Leon Jackson)和乔伊斯琳-穆迪(Joycelyn Moody)等人的文章和著作,以及可搜索数字数据库的出现,激发了学术研究的热潮,而且这种热潮丝毫没有减退的迹象。例如Benjamin Fagan 的《The Black Newspaper and the Chosen Nation》(佐治亚大学出版社,2016 年)、Gardner 的《Black Print Unbound》(牛津大学出版社,2015 年)和 Derrick Spires 的《The Practice of Citizenship》(宾夕法尼亚大学出版社,2019 年)激发了人们对黑人报纸和期刊的兴趣,《Early African American Print Culture》(编辑:Lara Langer Cohen 和 Jordan Moody)等文集也受到了广泛关注。Lara Langer Cohen 和 Jordan Alexander Stein [宾夕法尼亚大学出版社,2012 年])、《有色人种会议运动》(Jim Casey、P. Gabrielle Foreman 和 Sarah Patterson [北卡罗来纳大学出版社,2021 年])和《鲜明的白色背景》(Brigette Fielder 和 Jonathan Senchyne [威斯康星大学出版社,2019 年])等文集进一步扩大了我们对非裔美国人写作的体裁和形式的了解。这些著作的大部分效果是重新考虑了奴隶叙事在 1900 年前的美国黑人文学中的作用。Michaël Roy 的《逃亡文本》(Fugitive Texts:通过关注前贝鲁姆时期叙事的物质性和多样性,有助于推进这一批评项目。罗伊的专著是2017年首次在法国出版的《逃亡文本》(Textes Fugitifs)的修订版。美国版由苏珊-皮克福德(Susan Pickford)翻译[第210页完],更新了学术装置,但与 2017 年出版的版本基本保持一致,后者曾获得法国美国研究协会的研究奖。正如罗伊所言,他的这本书填补了非裔美国人文学研究的一大空白,因为它是第一本专注于我们称之为 "奴隶叙事 "的文本的印刷、发行、流通、销售和接受的专著。此外,罗伊在《逃亡文本》中将这一术语复杂化,认为要理解这一体裁的复杂性,我们必须关注叙事的出版史。罗伊认为,"用图书史的方法来研究前贝鲁姆奴隶叙事......可以揭示通常被视为同质整体的叙事的异质性"(9)。罗伊通过关注两个关键因素来形成自己的论点:叙事出版的年代和出版模式。正如罗伊所解释的,这些因素与 19 世纪 30 年代、40 年代和 50 年代出版的叙事作品密切相关,罗伊的三个章节将历史背景与这三个年代的出版案例研究相结合。罗伊的第一章关注的是 19 世纪 30 年代在主要废奴组织,尤其是美国反奴隶制协会(AASS)的主持(或支持)下出版的奴隶叙事。正如罗伊所指出的,1830 年前美国出版了一些奴隶叙事诗,但所有这些叙事诗都是自行出版的,因此是在当地而非全国范围内流传。这种发行模式的一个例外--大卫-沃克的《向世界有色人种公民的呼吁》(1829 年)--不是奴隶叙事,而且沃克的小册子依靠的是一种独特的发行方式(由水手偷运到南方),这对大多数作者或出版商来说都是不可行的。即便如此,沃克这本具有煽动性的小册子所引发的歇斯底里证实了印刷品对于新成立的废奴组织的力量,19 世纪 30 年代中后期,美国废奴协会试图用反奴隶制出版物覆盖全国。作为这场运动的一部分,美国废奴协会决定在 1838 年出版发行《詹姆斯-威廉姆斯的叙述》。对威廉姆斯叙述的大多数批评都集中在支持奴隶制的南方人所引发的争议上,他们对威廉姆斯故事的某些方面提出了质疑,从而削弱了威廉姆斯故事的政治效力,但罗伊通过关注...
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来源期刊
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE
EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE LITERATURE, AMERICAN-
CiteScore
0.30
自引率
33.30%
发文量
62
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