A Companion to American Literature 2020 Wiley

A Companion to American Literature 2020 Wiley

A Companion to American Literature, edited by Susan Belasco and Theresa Strouth Gaul, offers a comprehensive overview of American literary traditions and their historical contexts. This 2020 edition published by Wiley explores significant themes, movements, and figures in American literature, providing insights into the evolution of literary forms and cultural narratives. Ideal for students and scholars of American literature, this resource covers a range of topics from colonial times to contemporary works, making it a valuable reference for understanding the complexities of American literary history. The text includes critical essays and analyses that highlight the contributions of diverse authors and the impact of socio-political factors on literature.

Key Points

  • Explores major themes and movements in American literature from colonial times to the present.
  • Includes critical essays on significant authors and their contributions to the literary landscape.
  • Analyzes the socio-political contexts that shaped American literary traditions.
  • Provides insights into the evolution of literary forms and cultural narratives in America.
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  • Giulia Picco
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A Companion to American Literature: Volume I: Origins to 1820, First Edition. General Editor: Susan Belasco.
Volume Editors: Theresa Strouth Gaul, Linck Johnson, and Michael Soto.
© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Published 2020 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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The First Black Atlantic
The Archive andPrint Culture
oftheTransatlantic Slave Trade andSlavery
John Saillant
The American literature of the first black Atlantic was a body of manuscripts and
publications arising from the transatlantic or circumatlantic experiences of black
authors from the mideighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. In these decades,
the Atlantic slave trade peaked in the number of captives transported while the slave
system was expanding economically, demographically, and territorially. As the terror
of the slave system swelled, its opponents hardened. The trade in slaves and enslave-
ment itself were resisted in various ways, ranging from insurrections on land and at sea
to political abolitionism in Europe and in North America to revolution in Haiti.
Freedpeople were building social institutions in locations as various as Philadelphia,
London, Freetown, and central Trinidad. Readers and scholars of literature see in the
years from 1760 to 1820 the first sustained efflorescence of publications by black
authors. This body of works is still evolving in the twentyfirst century as scholars
continue to uncover previously unknown manuscripts. Moreover, the legacies of the
slave trade and of slavery are today still subject to reinterpretation in the Americas,
Europe, and West Africa, leading inevitably to new understandings of the earliest
writings in European languages by black people. The first black Atlantic remains alive
today for readers and scholars.
Texts of the first black Atlantic were primarily Anglophone but included some
works composed in other European languages and in Arabic. These texts were produced
in mainland North America, the Caribbean, England, and Sierra Leone by authors who
had lived for at least a time in the Americas. Many were heavily edited by white
handlers – patrons, editors, or printers – in the course of publication. A few were
The First Black Atlantic: Archive and Print Culture 323
translated from one language to another before 1820. Fitting an Atlantic literature,
itscreators often had made transoceanic voyages, yet some had traveled only along
seaboards or within islands while others had joined intercontinental networks of
exchange of ideas, values, and texts while barely traveling themselves. Chronology,
genre, authorship, and audience intrigue modern scholars. While 1820 can be under-
stood as the end of early American literature, several blackauthored works published
between 1821 and 1850 recounted the author’s experiences of the late eighteenth or
early nineteenth century. These later works belong alongside the works of the first
black Atlantic. Central and familiar genres were poetry, essays, sermons, letters,
autobiography, conversion accounts, and travelogues, yet modern scholars also study
less “literary” works such as ballads, hymns, church covenants, petitions, and jailhouse
confessions. Even runaway slave advertisements–by definition not black authored–have
been mined by scholars for black presence. “Performance” is sometimes a more accurate
descriptor than is “text.” Texts and performances of the first black Atlantic have also
led some scholars to question the notion of “author” assumed in most early modern
and modern literary culture. Similarly, the audience apparently intended by a black
author varied greatly from text to text. Often the intended audience was obvious,
while at other times scholars have identified it through a painstaking process. Multiple
intended audiences were sometimes likely. A recent academic concern is black authors’
intersection with print cultures. In some cases, early black authors had open avenues
to print cultures, and a few black men labored in print trades. In other cases, the means
of appearing in print–reading, writing, editing, funding, and publishing printed
works–were mostly unavailable in their lifetimes. For some of those authors, preser-
vation of their handwritten manuscripts, often by white patrons or coreligionists,
allowed posthumous publication. Often such posthumous publication has occurred in
the twentieth or the twentyfirst century.
Twentiethcentury and twentyfirstcentury scholars and editors have sought
various solutions to the challenges posed by early black publications and manuscripts.
The goal of early to midtwentiethcentury black bibliophiles was the creation of
editions easily understood in a modern idiom. This was the modern black literary
professional’s response to early preservationist impulses (often motivated by religion)
and print culture (often motivated by abolitionism) that added mightily to the collec-
tion and publication of black manuscripts. Yet these early editions are now mostly
outdated. Beginning in the late twentieth century, most editors and scholars demanded
increasing accuracy in the editions of the texts of the first black Atlantic. Still, even
accuracy has not been the end of the story.
For the early twentyfirst century, two metaphors have come forward to summarize
and express current scholarly approaches. One metaphor is blackauthored texts as
fragments: many documents, whether in manuscript or in print, were preserved in
slivers or splinters or were refracted by white transcribers or editors who inevitably
selected only certain parts of a black literary performance for preservation. The other
metaphor is the archive as an act of violence: preservation of black works and
blackvoices in a selective manner was in its nature a form of racist subjugation. These
324 Volume I: Origins to 1820
modern scholars have set ambitious agendas. Those who work with fragments use
scholarly tools to reconstruct both texts and contexts, often with slim evidence. Those
who respond to violence in the archive seek origins of black works and black voices
antecedent to the racism inherent in preservation, transcription, publication, and other
print culture acts. Yet the history of early black Atlantic writing, from preservation
and publication, through the renaissance initiated by black bibliophiles, through
modern editions has always been rooted in the first preservationists, no matter how
racist they or their contexts might have been.
Genesis oftheIdea oftheBlack Atlantic
If scholars of the first black Atlantic have ranged widely in thinking about language,
chronology, genre, authorship, audience, performance, and print culture – and if
scholars have been searching for metaphors like “fragment” and “violence”–there has
been no need to range far afield for the term “the black Atlantic.” Paul Gilroy (1993)
established the term in modern scholarship. The essentials of Gilroy’s definition were,
however, assumed in some of the earliest professional scholarship on Africarelated
topics, such as essays in the interdisciplinary Journal of Negro History, first issued in
1916. Furthermore, the authors of the first black Atlantic themselves embodied many
of Gilroy’s themes; they also predicted many of the criticisms of The Black Atlantic a
century and a half or more before Gilroy’s critics were born. The arguments of The
Black Atlantic and responses to them had previously been made, in idioms of the
eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, in the texts and the performances
of the first black Atlantic. In short, the black Atlantic seemed new at the end of the
twentieth century, yet it had been recognized by some of its participants since the late
eighteenth century and has been treated by scholars since the early twentieth century.
Gilroy’s arguments should be the starting place today simply because The Black
Atlantic struck a chord in modern readers by corroborating their experience of a
racialized world. The Black Atlantic is now one of black literary scholarship’s most
quoted and cited books. Gilroy sought to identify and “occupy” a “space” separate
from, albeit in between, “racist, nationalist or ethnically absolutist discourses” (1). Far
from seeing these discourses as “mutually exclusive” (115), Gilroy argued that a
transfigurative black expressive culture (including literature but much else too)
evolved in the interstices of competing, inconsistent discourses. The power of the
slavetrade system and the power of the plantationslavery system pushed black
expressive culture into “antidiscursive and extralinguistic” directions (57). Defined
in large part by such power and the black responses to it, the Atlantic littoral could be,
Gilroy asserted, “one single, complex unit of analysis” (15). Naturally enough, then,
so could the black Atlantic. Black expressive culture itself had not been locked into
either “the nation state” or “the constraints of ethnicity” (19), so, Gilroy suggested,
neither should modern scholars of AfricanAtlantic culture. In Gilroy’s view, black
expressive culture and AfricanAtlantic people themselves neither melted completely
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FAQs of A Companion to American Literature 2020 Wiley

What are the main themes discussed in A Companion to American Literature?
A Companion to American Literature discusses various themes such as identity, race, gender, and the American experience. It examines how these themes have evolved over time and influenced literary movements. The text highlights the interplay between literature and historical events, showcasing how authors responded to social and political changes. Additionally, it explores the contributions of marginalized voices and how they have shaped American literary discourse.
Who are some key authors featured in this companion?
The companion features a diverse array of authors, including notable figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Toni Morrison. Each author is examined in the context of their contributions to American literature and the societal influences that shaped their work. The text also highlights lesser-known authors who have made significant impacts on the literary landscape, providing a more inclusive view of American literature.
How does the companion address the historical context of American literature?
The companion addresses the historical context of American literature by linking literary works to significant historical events and movements. It discusses how colonialism, slavery, and immigration have influenced the themes and styles of various literary periods. By providing a timeline of American history alongside literary developments, the text helps readers understand the socio-political factors that have shaped the narratives and forms of American literature.
What is the target audience for A Companion to American Literature?
A Companion to American Literature is targeted at students, educators, and scholars interested in American literary studies. It serves as a valuable resource for those studying literature at the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as for researchers seeking a comprehensive overview of American literary traditions. The text's critical essays and analyses make it suitable for both classroom use and independent study.
What types of literary movements are covered in the companion?
The companion covers a wide range of literary movements, including Romanticism, Transcendentalism, Realism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. Each movement is explored in terms of its defining characteristics, key authors, and significant works. The text also examines how these movements intersect with cultural and historical contexts, providing a nuanced understanding of their evolution and impact on American literature.

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