Beyond Douglass: New Perspectives on Early African-American Literature (Apercus)

The starting point for "Beyond Douglass" is an institutional paralysis in the study of Early African-American literature. Over the past decade, literary anthologies have codified this tradition through the exemplary figures of Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, Harriet Jacobs, and Fredrick Douglass. The irony is that, at the same time, scholars have continued the valuable work of reclamation, a warrant for new approaches to slave narratives, protest literature, autobiography, poetry, and fiction. The danger is that these more recently presented works will remain texts for the specialist and will neither enter nor modify the newly established canon.This book seeks to be an intervention in this premature canonization, inviting a pedagogical communication between teachers of American literature and the specialists focusing on early African-American literature. The essays in the collection introduce both newly recovered texts and new scholarly approaches, and together represent a powerful call to revise what we think we know about this rich vein in American letters. Michael J. Drexler is Assistant Professor of English at Bucknell University. Ed White is Associate Professor of English at the University of Florida.