"Am I Not a Man and a Brother?": Representations of Slavery in the West Indies and Abolitionist Rhetoric on the Road to Emancipation

• Thesis title in Czech: "Cožpak nejsem člověk a bratr?": Reprezentace otroctví v Západní Indii a abolicionistická rétorika na cestě k emancipaci
• Thesis title in English: "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?": Representations of Slavery in the West Indies and Abolitionist Rhetoric on the Road to Emancipation
• Key words: britská literatura, Západní Indie, britské impérium, orientalismus, otroctví, abolicionismus, sentimentalismus, autobiografie otroků
• English key words: British literature, the West Indies, the British Empire, Orientalism, slavery, abolitionism, sentimentalism, slave narratives
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2013/2014
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 18.06.2014
• Date of assignment: 18.06.2014
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 25.06.2014
• Date and time of defence: 09.09.2015 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 07.08.2015
• Date of proceeded defence: 09.09.2015
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D.

Guidelines

This MA thesis will treat the topic of the abolitionist movement from the perspective of social, cultural and literary history from the beginnings until the abolition of slavery in British colonies in the West Indiesin 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. The thesis will focus on the discourse of race and slavery - racial theories, arguments for and against slavery made at the time, the manner in which the abolitionists presented their cause, what techniques and strategies were employed. The discussion will necessarily have to be framed by a general study of colonial discourse of the Caribbean and the difference between the encounters with Caribs and black slaves from Africa. This analysis will be informed by the methodology of Paul Gilroy's Black Atlantic, which deals with the material and discursive exchange of goods and information in the triangle of Britain, Africa and the Caribbean, and also by the conclusions of Edward W. Said’s Orientalism. The historical background of the slave trade will include historical milestones such as the Zong tragedy in order to establish the British relations with theCaribbean and the platform of the abolitionist movement.
The thesis will analyse abolitionist texts by principal representatives such as William Wilberforce, it will be supported by abolitionist prose and poetry, for example by William Cowper ( selections from “Charity,” “The Task,” “The Negro’s Complaint,” “The Morning Dream”), Richard Savage (“Of Public Spirit in Regard to Public Works”) and Hannah More (“Slavery, a Poem”).
The analysis of the abolitionist movement and its arguments will be supplemented by an study of slave narratives which became a part of the anti-slavery debate. The hypothesis underlying my approach to the abolitionist texts and slave narratives is that while the abolitionists contributed to the emancipation of slaves, they might have also used discursive strategies that were deeply embedded in orientalist stereotyping and sentimentalism. The analysis will also investigate to what extent the freed slaves in their self-representation within their own narratives employed orientalist stereotyping and became part of the colonial discourse, or whether they managed to undermine, perhaps in some way subvert established patterns. Important slave narratives from the Caribbean will be discussed especially in terms of their author's identity construction and self-representation, narrative patterns and other formal devices: The Interesting Narrative Of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, An African Slave; The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave; Negro Slavery Described by a Negro: Being the Narrative of Ashton Warner, a Narrative of St. Vincent and A Narrative of Events, Since the First of August, 1834 by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica. These will be compared with Ignatius Sancho (Letters of Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. In Two Volumes.), who narrates a story of a slave in Britain. Necessarily, the thesis will also have to attend to matters of period and discursive contextualisation by taking into account the principal novels and other literary genres which have a similar theme: Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave. A True History by Aphra Behn or Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy by Laurence Sterne among others.

References

Primary Literature:
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave. A True History. 1688.
Cowper, William. Selections from “Charity,” “The Task,” “The Negro’s Complaint,” “The Morning Dream”
Douglas, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave. 1845.
Grainger, James. “Sugar Cane.” 1765.
Kingsley, Charles. At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. 1871.
More, Hannah. “Slavery, a Poem”
Paton, William Agnew. Down the Islands, a Voyage to the Caribees. 1887.
Savage, Richard. “Of Public Spirit in Regard to Public Works”
Steel, Richard. “Inkle and Yarico” in the Spectator No 11, Tuesday March 13, 1711
Sterne, Laurence. Sentimental Journey through France and Italy.London:OxfordUniversity Press. 1968.
The Interesting Narrative Of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, An African Slave. 1789.
The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave. 1831.
Negro Slavery Described by a Negro: Being the Narrative of Ashton Warner, a Narrative of St. Vincent. 1831.
A Narrative of Events, Since the First of August, 1834 by James Williams, an Apprenticed Labourer in Jamaica. 1837.
Letters of Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. In Two Volumes.

Secondary Literature:
Arana, R. Victoria and Lauri Ramney. Black British Writing.New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2004.
Dash, J. Michael. The Other America: Caribbean Literature in a New World Context.Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia. 1998.
Ferguson, Moira. Subject to Others: British Women Writers and Colonial Slavery, 1670 – 1834.New York: Routledge. 1992.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness.Cambridge:HarvardUniversity Press. 1993.
Hulme, Peter. Colonial Encounters.London:Methuen. 1986.
Hulme, Peter. Elegy for a Dying Race: The Caribs and Their Visitors. 1993.
Hulme, Peter and Neil L. Whitehead, eds. Wild Majesty: Encounters with Caribs from Columbus to the Present Day. An Anthology.Oxford:OxfordUniversity Press. 1992.
Innes, C.L. A History of Black and Asian Writing in Britain, 1700 – 2000.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press. 2002.
Innes, C.L. The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literature in English.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press. 2007.
Richardson, Alan and Debbie Lee. Early Black British Writing: Selected Texts with Introduction: Critical Essay /Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince.Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 2004.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism.London: Penguin Books. 2003.
Young, Robert J.C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity on Theory, Culture and Race.London: Routledge. 2006.
Young, Robert J.C. The Idea of English Ethnicity.Malden: Blackwell Publishing. 2007.