Slave narratives are a specific genre in American literature. This genre underwent significant changes, especially in recent years. Slave narratives started off as spiritual autobiographies with a clear function, namely to make sympathetic readers aware of the injustices and cruelty of slavery in the Southern States and, therefore, to help abolish slavery. In more recent works like Toni Morrison’s Beloved other literary forms like magic realism are used to express the traumatic experience of slavery. This course aims to give the students an exemplary overview of slave narratives from all over the world and the more recent developments of this genre. We will analyse a classic slave narrative from the US as well as texts from South African, Canadian and Caribbean authors. In addition, we will explore the different and rather specific contexts in which the texts were written. Students who register for this course should be prepared to read about five novels and any additional literature which will be distributed in class. Among the texts we will discuss are Toni Morrison’s Beloved (London: Vintage 1997), Caryl Phillips’ Cambridge (London: Picador 1991), Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes (Toronto: HarperCollins 2007) and Yvette Christiansë’s, Unconfessed (New York: Other Press 2006). |
