Research Catalog

Title

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

Author

Warren, Lenora

Publication

• Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2019]
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

169 pages : illustrations; 25 cm.

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"--
• "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.""--

Series Statement

Transits: literature, thought & culture 1650-1850

Uniform Title

Transits (Bucknell University)

Alternative Title

Sailors, slaves, and insurrection in early American literature, 1789-1886

Subjects

• American literature
• English literature
• Black author
• Slave insurrections in literature
• Antislavery movements in literature
• American literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• Abolitionists in literature
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• African Americans in literature > 19th century
• Slavery in literature
• African Americans in literature > 18th century
• English literature > 18th century > History and criticism
• 1700-1899

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• 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.

Call Number

Sc E 19-1047

ISBN

• 9781684480180
• 1684480183
• 9781684480173
• 1684480175

LCCN

2018025926

OCLC

1037806799

Author

Warren, Lenora, author.

Title

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

Publisher

Lewisburg, Pennsylvania : Bucknell University Press, [2019]

Copyright Date

©2019

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Transits: literature, thought & culture 1650-1850

Transits (Bucknell University)

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chronological Term

1700-1899

Local Subject

Black author.

Research Call Number

Sc E 19-1047