Inhoudsopgave:
|
As nearly all of its reviewers pointed out, Clotel was an audience-minded performance, an effort to capitalize on the post-Uncle Tomâs Cabin âmaniaâ for abolitionist fiction in Great Britain, where William Wells Brown lived between 1849 and 1854. The novel tells the story of Clotel and Althesa, the fictional daughters of Thomas Jefferson and his mixed-race slave. Like the popular and entertaining public lectures that Brown gave in England and America, Clotel is a series of startling, attention-grabbing narrative âattractions.â Brown creates in this novel a delivery system for these attractions, in an effort to draw as many readers as possible towards anti-slavery and anti-racist causes. Rough, studded with caricatures, and intimate with the racism it ironizes, Clotel is still capable of creating a potent mix of discomfort and delight.\n\nThis edition aims to make it possible to read Clotel in something like its original cultural context. Geoffrey Sanbornâs Introduction discusses Brownâs extensive plagiarism of other authors in composing Clotel, as well as his narrative strategies within the novel itself. Appendices include material on slave auctions, contemporary attractions and amusements, and the topic of plagiarism more broadly. |
nl
en