"We Need the Storm, the Whirlwind, the Earthquake": The Intersection of Language and Violence in Nat Turner's "Confessions" and Frederick Douglass's <i>My Bondage and My Freedom</i>

<p>Resistance literature is an established genre, dating back to the late eighteenth century, but it underwent a rhetorical revision as slavery increased within the United States in the years leading up to the Civil War. As slaves and free blacks began to rebel against their oppressed condition, they "stole" two prominent tools whites used_ to - oppress slaves: language and violence. Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom is a self-conscious revision within resistance literature that argues for national change by advocating physical violence with written language. Reading this text as an intertext with Nat Turner's "Confessions" reveals the ways in which Douglass reappropriates the "stolen" slave's voice and works to-further abolition in the antebellum era.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Tharp, Allison L

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ellen Weinauer

• Arts and Humanities
• English Language and Literature

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/566

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1641