The Slave Narrative and Dark Romanticism

Question 1

American Realism

Answer 1

• aims at showing (ordinary) life accurately
• Versimilitude
• Characters: thoughts, ethical dilemmas, explanation of motifs, relation to others
  > Ordinary people and ordinary life as location of historical forces

Question 2

Versimilitude

Answer 2

• Plausibilität
• Appearance of being true or real
• likeness or resemblance to truth, reality or fact

Question 3

The slave Narrative
- Background

Answer 3

• 1619: The first slaves arrive in Virginia
• 1808: congress bans the importation of slaves from Africa (“then breeding of new slaves”)
• 1820: The Missouri Compromise bans slavery north of the southern boundary of Missouri (Mason-Dixon-line)
• 1863: Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, declaring, “That all persons held a slave are, and henceforth shall be free.”
• 1865: end of Civil War, Slavery is effectively ended with 250.000 slaves hearing the news of the end of the Civil War two months earlier. 13th Amendment is ratified: probation of slavery
• 1870: 15th Amendment is ratified, giving blacks the right to vote

Question 4

Autobiographical Writing

Answer 4

• Self, life to write
• Work of art/ testaments and evidence by witnesses of history
• blend the literary and the historical, the factual and the invented

Question 5

Autobiographical Pact

Answer 5

• Literary convention, basis of the understanding between author and reader
• autobiographical texts are rooted in the “real” world
• “Pact”/ contract between writer, publisher and reader defines what an autobiography is
• colliding of author, narrator and main character