“No rogue, no rascal, no thief”: Black Africans and the making of early American literature, 1542-1701

Cassander Lavon Smith, Purdue University

Abstract

This dissertation challenges two assumptions plaguing current studies of early American and African American literature. The first is the assumption that those of African descent were not relevant in the literature until the eighteenth century with the publication of the first slave narratives. The representations of black Africans prior to this date are largely discounted because they appear as minor figures in texts written by European explorers, missionaries, etc. The few approaches that do examine these representations are plagued by a second assumption: that the representations are too heavily mediated to be recovered. They read the mediated figures as no more than symbolic presences that European, and later Euro-American, writers created and manipulated to achieve particular rhetorical and discursive goals. This dissertation argues, instead, that African-descended people played a vital role in how the earliest narratives about the Americas took shape. Their representations are, indeed, mediated. However, that process involved not only European writers’ imaginations but also involved the lived experiences of black Africans who participated in the New World as explorers, slaves, merchants, etc. Slaves, especially, found occasions to exercise an autonomy previously denied them. They actively approached the New World situations in which they found themselves, making it difficult for those coming from Europe to re-enact old world ideas of political and social dominance. That difficulty translated into early American narratives as writers struggled to not only interpret but subdue textually the actions of black Africans. The struggle manifests in the texts in the form of plot contradictions, ambiguities, and inconsistent characterizations.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Bross, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|American studies|American literature

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