The Strangers Book: The Human of African American Literature

Lloyd Pratt

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2016

The Strangers Book

The Human of African American Literature

Lloyd Pratt

In the series Haney Foundation Series

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812291995

Overview
Contents

About this book

The Strangers Book explores how a constellation of nineteenth-century African American writers radically reframed the terms of humanism by redefining what it meant to be a stranger.

Author / Editor information

Lloyd Pratt is Drue Heinz Professor of American Literature at the University of Oxford. He is author of Archives of American Time: Literature and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Reviews

"Lloyd Pratt's work addresses and rearticulates, in an exquisite way, current discussions of the status of the human in antebellum African American literature."—Branka Arsić, Columbia University

"The alternative humanism claimed by former slaves yields many corrective lessons for the present. Lloyd Pratt transforms our understanding of that archive by inserting the figure of the stranger into the interpretative frame. Energized by a host of newly unearthed discoveries, his innovative, absorbing book initiates a novel and urgent enquiry: the entanglement of race with various kinds of xenology. Ambitious and learned, this book will reshape the field of U.S. literary history."—Paul Gilroy, King's College London

"The Strangers Book provides a bracing and unexpected perspective on literary history. As Pratt's chapters unfold, the reader begins to see how early African American letters can be read as offering new critical possibilities for Western literature as a whole."—Nancy Bentley, University of Pennsylvania

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Introduction. Print and the Human Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. The Making of Self-Evidence Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
Chapter 2. Frederick Douglass’s Stranger-With-Thee Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	44
Chapter 3. Les Apôtres de la Littérature and Les Cenelles Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
Chapter 4. The Abundant Black Past Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	92
Chapter 5. How to Read a Strangers Book Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	114
Epilogue. Stranger Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	137
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	161
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	169
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 200
Keywords: Literature; African-American Studies; African Studies; Cultural Studies

eBook

Published: September 28, 2015
ISBN: 9780812291995