“That I should always listen to my body and love it”: Finding the Mind-Body Connection in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Slave Texts

• Main Author: Watkins, Emily Stuart
• Format: Others
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 2011
• Subjects: Beloved; Frederick Douglass; Harriet Jacobs; Mary Prince; Dessa Rose; Irmgard Bartenieff; Rudolf Von Laban; Mind-Body connection; Arts and Humanities; English Language and Literature
• Online Access: http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/2363; http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3362&context=etd

This thesis explores the presence of the movement theories of Irmgard Bartenieff, Peggy Hackney, and Rudolf Von Laban in the following texts: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Written by Himself (1845), The History of Mary Prince: A West Indian Slave (1831), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself, Linda Brent (1861), Sherley Anne Williams’s Dessa Rose (1986) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). The terms and phrases of movement theory will be introduced to the contemporary critical discussion already surrounding the texts, both furthering and challenging existing arguments.