The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel

The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel

Conceived as a literary form to aggressively publicize the abolitionist cause in the United States, the African American slave narrative remains a powerful and illuminating demonstration of America's dark history. Yet the genre's impact extended far beyond the borders of the U.S. The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation. Julia Sun-Joo Lee argues that novelists such as Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charles Dickens integrated into their works generic elements of the slave narrative-from the emphasis on literacy as a tool of liberation, to the teleological journey from slavery to freedom, to the ethics of resistance over submission. It contends that Victorian novelists used these tropes in an attempt to access the slave narrative's paradigm of resistance, illuminate the transnational dimension of slavery, and articulate Britain's role in the global community. Through a deft use of disparate sources, Lee reveals how the slave narrative becomes part of the textual network of the English novel, making visible how black literary, as well as economic, production contributed to British culture. "Lee's book is valuable not only for demonstrating how much Victorian novels have in common with American slave narratives, but for beginning to address the questions this kinship raises...This book breaks new ground, and later critics will build upon it to deepen our understanding of the relationship between the slave narrative and the Victorian novel." -- Victorian Studies "The great originality of Julia Sun-Joo Lee's work lies in the way it traces the influence of African American writing within the traditional heart of British Victorian literature, demonstrating how canonical writers such as Thackeray, Dickens, Gaskell, and Charlotte Brontë were responding in different ways to the genre of the slave narrative. With its surprising but illuminating juxtapositions, this is an example of transatlantic critical practice at its best." --Paul Giles, author of Atlantic Republic "The slave's narrative, meant solely to help in the abolishing of slavery, has always had its own literary integrity and importance. Here in this brilliant and original book, Julia Lee shows us the profound influence and transformation it had on the imagination of some of our great writers. With much splendid clarity of words and thought, The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel will continue that tradition of influence and transformation." --Jamaica Kincaid, author of A Small Place "Julia Sun-Joo Lee makes the case for the influence of American slavery and the slave narrative on the Victorian novel. Her carefully researched, elegantly written, and original studies of texts by Brontë, Thackeray, Gaskell, Dickens, and Stevenson are sure to become staples." --Audrey Fisch, author of American Slaves in Victorian England "Fresh and surefooted, Julia Sun-Joo Lee's book does what no other book has done before: it presents the American slave narrative as a point of origin for English narratives of dissent, resistance, and freedom. This is a welcome and, as Lee's authoritative work shows, a well-founded change in critical orientation. Lee's pathbreaking book will transform the fields of Victorian, transatlantic, and African American studies." --Henry Louis Gates Jr., author of The Signifying Monkey "Offers compelling evidence of the depth of Victorian writers' engagement with the plots, images, and motifs of American slave narratives... The American Slave Narrative and the Victorian Novel offers a rich array of information and ideas that will make it a rewarding read for any student of Victorian literature." -- Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies Investigates the shaping influence of writings by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other former US slaves on British fiction in the years between the Abolition Act and the Emancipation Proclamation Julia Sun-Joo Lee is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California.