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BestsellerE-book
Author Warren, Lenora, author.

Title Fire on the water : sailors, slaves, and insurrection in early American literature, 1789-1886 / Lenora Warren.

Publication Info. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2019]
©2019

Item Status

Description 1 online resource (169 pages) : illustrations.
text file
Series Transits: literature, thought & culture 1650-1850
Transits (Bucknell University)
Summary "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 Cinque, 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"-- Provided by publisher.
"This book 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. The book centers on four black sailors, whose experiences with slavery and insurrection either inspired or found resonance within fiction. Through these sailors and their fictional avatars, Warren argues that a lost history of the politics of insurrection resurfaces. This history has been either largely ignored or subsumed under the generic political anxieties of the abolitionist movement and widespread fears of a large-scale slave revolt. 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. This book is a call to consider, or reconsider, how the confluence of politics, language, and narrative are complicit in shaping the ways in which we think about race and violence. Using the backdrop of the ocean to highlight both the expansive imaginary and the perilous reality of undoing oppressive hierarchies through mutiny, Fire On the Water challenges scholars to consider how violence gets categorized as "revolutionary" or "aberrant.""-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents Introduction -- 1. Witness to the Atrocities: Olaudah Equiano, Thomas Clarkson, and the Abolition of the Slave Trade -- 2. Denmark Vesey, John Howison, and Revolutionary Possibility -- 3. Joseph Cinqué, The Amistad Mutiny, and Revolutionary Whitewashing -- 4. The Black and White Sailor: Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor and the Case of Washington Goode -- Coda.
Local Note eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America
Subject American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
American literature.
Chronological Term 19th century
Subject Slavery in literature.
Slavery in literature.
Slave rebellions in literature.
Slave rebellions in literature.
Antislavery movements in literature.
Antislavery movements in literature.
Abolitionists in literature.
Abolitionists in literature.
English literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism.
English literature.
Chronological Term 18th century
1700-1899
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Added Author Bucknell University Press.
Added Title Sailors, slaves, and insurrection in early American literature, 1789-1886
Other Form: Print version: Warren, Lenora. Fire on the water. Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2019] 1684480183 9781684480180 (DLC) 2018025926 (OCoLC)1037806799
ISBN 1684480213 PDF
9781684480210 (electronic book)