Plantation Romances and Slave Narratives: Symbiotic Genres
Read together, the "loyalist" plantation romance and the "fugitive" slave narrative speak to one another as symbiotic southern genres, even if only contrapuntally. The plantation romances exhibit considerable anxiety about the stability of the slaveholding South, while the slave...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Emory Center for Digital Scholarship
2004-03-01
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| Series: | Southern Spaces |
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| Online Access: | https://southernspaces.org/node/42709 |
| Summary: | Read together, the "loyalist" plantation romance and the "fugitive" slave narrative speak to one another as symbiotic southern genres, even if only contrapuntally. The plantation romances exhibit considerable anxiety about the stability of the slaveholding South, while the slave narratives are not only stories of flight from the South but of deeply held cultural and familial roots in the South. When Jacobs and Douglass's narratives are grouped under the heading of "Literatures of Slavery" with plantation romances and Anti-Tom novels, the regional dynamic of the antebellum South is clarified for all of these genres. |
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| ISSN: | 1551-2754 |