Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Dreams of Dead Bodies: Blackness, Labor, and Detective Fiction in American Literature argues that the detective genre's lineage lies in unexpected texts: experimental works on the margins of what we recognize as classical detective fiction today. It shows that authors like Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Rudolph Fisher drew on detective fiction's puzzle-elements to wrestle with complicated questions about race and labor in the United States, such that the emergence of detective fiction is itself bound to a history of interracial conflicts and labor struggles. Unlike previous studies of detective fiction, this book foregrounds an interracial genealogy of detective fiction, building a nuanced picture of the ways that both black and white American authors appropriated and cultivated literary conventions that finally coalesced in a recognizable genre at the turn of the twentieth century. These authors tinkered with detective fiction's puzzle-elements to address a variety of historical contexts, including the exigencies of chattel slavery, the erosion of working class solidarities by racial and ethnic competition, and accelerated mass production. Dreams for Dead Bodies demonstrates that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature was broadly engaged with detective fiction, and that authors rehearsed and refined its formal elements in literary works typically relegated to the margins of the genre. By looking at these margins, the book argues, we can better understand the origins and cultural functions of American detective fiction.

Detective and mystery stories, American --- African Americans in literature. --- Working class in literature. --- Slavery in literature. --- Work in literature. --- African Americans in literature --- Working class in literature --- Slavery in literature --- Work in literature --- American Literature --- English --- Languages & Literatures --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism --- Slavery and slaves in literature --- Slaves in literature --- Labor and laboring classes in literature --- Afro-Americans in literature --- Negroes in literature --- Slavery. --- Abolition of slavery --- Antislavery --- Enslavement --- Mui tsai --- Ownership of slaves --- Servitude --- Slave keeping --- Slave system --- Slaveholding --- Thralldom --- Crimes against humanity --- Serfdom --- Slaveholders --- Slaves --- literature --- cultural studies --- Edgar Allan Poe --- Jupiter --- Mark Twain --- Enslaved persons in literature

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Neither Fugitive nor Free draws on the freedom suit as recorded in the press and court documents to offer a critically and historically engaged understanding of the freedom celebrated in the literary and cultural histories of transatlantic abolitionism. Freedom suits involved those enslaved valets, nurses, and maids who accompanied slaveholders onto free soil. Once brought into a free jurisdiction, these attendants became informally free, even if they were taken back to a slave jurisdiction—at least according to abolitionists and the enslaved themselves. In order to secure their freedom formally, slave attendants or others on their behalf had to bring suit in a court of law. Edlie Wong critically recuperates these cases in an effort to reexamine and redefine the legal construction of freedom, will, and consent. This study places such historically central anti-slavery figures as Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, and William Lloyd Garrison alongside such lesser-known slave plaintiffs as Lucy Ann Delaney, Grace, Catharine Linda, Med, and Harriet Robinson Scott. Situated at the confluence of literary criticism, feminism, and legal history, Neither Fugitive nor Free presents the freedom suit as a "new" genre to African American and American literary studies.

Law in literature. --- Slavery in literature. --- Law and literature --- Slavery --- Antislavery movements --- Slaves --- American literature --- Slave narratives --- Blacks --- Slavery and slaves in literature --- Slaves in literature --- Literature and law --- Literature --- Abolition of slavery --- Antislavery --- Enslavement --- Mui tsai --- Ownership of slaves --- Servitude --- Slave keeping --- Slave system --- Slaveholding --- Thralldom --- Crimes against humanity --- Serfdom --- Slaveholders --- Enslaved persons --- Persons --- Autobiography --- Slaves' writings --- Negroes --- Ethnology --- History --- Law and legislation --- Legal status, laws, etc. --- African American authors --- History and criticism. --- Travel --- African. --- American. --- Free. --- Fugitive. --- Neither. --- Situated. --- confluence. --- criticism. --- feminism. --- freedom. --- genre. --- history. --- legal. --- literary. --- new. --- presents. --- studies. --- suit. --- Black persons --- Black people --- Enslaved persons' writings --- Enslaved persons in literature