Frederick Douglass Critics Flashcards
His narrative is about achievement?
Valerie Smith - ‘the very terms in which he casts his self-representation … recall the myth of American achievement’
What is the jeremiad?
A long literary work, usually in prose, where the author laments the state of society in a bitter and serious tone
How did the jeremiad limit Douglass?
According to William L. Andrews, the jeremiad allowed Douglass to criticise the South as long as he judged the region by American values. Therefore whilst he criticised slavery, he invoked an image of America as a land of freedom and opportunity
His speech about the 4th of July?
1852 speech - ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’
‘a day that reveals to [a slave] […] the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim’
‘to him, your celebration is a sham’
When was the book published?
1845
What is the Aristotelian assumption?
That eyewitness accounts made the most powerful literary performances
What moves the audience toward civic action?
Douglass’ transition from silent victimisation to defiant testimony
DeLombard suggests this happens in the last sentence - ‘I have been engaged in pleading the cause of my brethren - with what success, and with what devotion, I leave those acquainted with my labours to decide’
His repeated descriptions of violence?
These scenes connect his own suffering to the suffering with other slaves. His interest in the compelling, visceral effects of the visual can be traced to his own interest in photography - he was the most photographed American in the 19th century
Who viewed the slave narrative genre as a fraud?
Caroline Lee Hentz in The Planter’s Northern Bride (1854), a pro-slavery response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
His narrative centres on his aspiration of knowledge?
The slave narrative created a perfect framework to accomplish this, as its conventions were based on a limited knowledge
Nuance - he was also jealous of the ignorance of other slaves
Douglass’ views about the US constitution?
He moved away from the Garrisonian view that the constitution was utterly corrupt to the view that it should be celebrated for upholding an ideal that America was failing to live up to. His narrative participates in a particular vision of America marked by freedom and self-reliance
His knowledge helps him become a heroic black leader?
Levine - his ‘energy, will, and intelligence helped him to rise from his obscure origins in slavery to become the representative black leader of his time’
Who published the Narrative?
William Lloyd Garrison whom he would formerly break with in 1851
How did he disagree with Garrison?
He wanted him to ‘narrate wrongs’, whilst Douglass wanted to ‘denounce them’
Moments of sentimentality?
Sparse due to his preoccupation on describing violence and knowledge
Garrison and Phillips call attention to the ‘pathos and sublimity’ of the images of the white sails at Chesapeake Bay where the audience should linger and reflect
He later applies sentimentality?
Uses this more in his 1855 autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom due to the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Effect of publishing by white abolitionists?
John Sekora has argued that they can best be understood as “white envelopes” with “black messages”
What is the difference between the two texts?
There is a contrast between Douglass’ triumphant self-reliance and the more rational self which articulates her desire for freedom as her wish to provide for her children
