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Plagiarama! - William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions (Paperback)
Loot Price: R580
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Plagiarama! - William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions (Paperback)
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List price R674
Loot Price R580
Discovery Miles 5 800
You Save R94 (14%)
Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days
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William Wells Brown (1814-1884) was a vocal abolitionist, a
frequent antagonist of Frederick Douglass, and the author of
Clotel, the first known novel by an African American. He was also
an extensive plagiarist, copying at least 87,000 words from close
to 300 texts. In this critical study of Brown's work and legacy,
Geoffrey Sanborn offers a novel reading of the writer's plagiarism,
arguing the act was a means of capitalizing on the energies of
mass-cultural entertainments popularized by showmen such as P. T.
Barnum. By creating the textual equivalent of a variety show, Brown
animated antislavery discourse and evoked the prospect of a
pleasurably integrated world. Brown's key dramatic protagonists
were the "spirit of capitalization"-the unscrupulous double of Max
Weber's spirit of capitalism-and the "beautiful slave girl," a
light-skinned African American woman on the verge of sale and rape.
Brown's unsettling portrayal of these figures unfolded within a
riotous patchwork of second-hand texts, upset convention, and
provoked the imagination. Could a slippery upstart lay the
groundwork for a genuinely interracial society? Could the
fetishized image of a not-yet-sold woman hold open the possibility
of other destinies? Sanborn's analysis of pastiche and plagiarism
adds new depth to the study of nineteenth-century culture and the
history of African American literature, suggesting modes of African
American writing that extend beyond narratives of necessity and
purpose, characterized by the works of Frederick Douglass and
others.
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