eBook

Spiritual Interrogations

Katherine Clay Bassard

1999

Overview

The late eighteenth century witnessed an influx of black women to the slave-trading ports of the American Northeast. The formation of an early African American community, bound together by shared experiences and spiritual values, owed much to these women's voices. The significance of their writings would be profound for all African Americans' sense of their own identity as a people. Katherine Clay Bassard's book is the first detailed account of pre-Emancipation writings from the period of 1760 to 1863, in light of a developing African American religious culture and emerging free black communities. Her study--which examines the relationship among race, culture, and community--focuses on four women: the poet Phillis Wheatley and poet and essayist Ann Plato, both Congregationalists; and the itinerant preacher Jarena Lee, and Shaker eldress Rebecca Cox Jackson, who, with Lee, had connections with African Methodism. Together, these women drew on what Bassard calls a \"spirituals matrix,\" which transformed existing literary genres to accommodate the spiritual music and sacred rituals tied to the African diaspora. Bassard's important illumination of these writers resurrects their path-breaking work. They were cocreators, with all black women who followed, of African American intellectual life.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: 19th century / Abolitionism / Absalom Jones / African American / African American authors / African American Vernacular English / African American women / African American women in literature / African Americans / African Methodist Episcopal Church / African-American literature / Afro-American authors / Afro-American women / Afro-American women -- Religious life / Afro-American women in literature / Alice Walker / American / American literature / American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism / American literature -- Afro-American authors -- History and criticism / American literature -- Women authors -- History and criticism / Ann Plato / Anne Bradstreet / Autobiography / Bell hooks / Beloved (novel) / Bernice Johnson Reagon / Black church / Black people / Black school / Carter G. Woodson / Catechism / Celibacy / Christianity and literature / Christianity and literature -- United States -- History / Community life in literature / Conversion narrative / Cornel West / Cotton Mather / Counterculture / Critical theory / Culture of the Southern United States / Dust Tracks on a Road / Frances Harper / Free negro / Free people of color / Gender Trouble / Genre / Gloria Naylor / God / Harriet E. Wilson / Henry Louis Gates Jr / History / History and criticism / Home Girls / Hortense Spillers / Ideology / Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl / Ivan van Sertima / James Weldon Johnson / Jarena Lee / Jean Fagan Yellin / Judith Butler / Kwame Anthony Appiah / Language & Literature / Lemuel Haynes / LITERARY CRITICISM / LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African-American / Literature / Lorraine Hansberry / Luisah Teish / Maria W. Stewart / Mary Prince / Melville J. Herskovits / Memoir / Mikhail Bakhtin / Mrs / Mules and Men / Narrative / Nella Larsen / Olaudah Equiano / Oppression / Our Nig / Pauline Hopkins / Performative utterance / Phillis Wheatley / Poems on Various Subjects / Poetry / Post-structuralism / Puritans / Racialization / Racism / Religion / Religion and literature / Religious and Moral / Religious life / Spiritual life in literature / Spirituals (Songs) / Spirituals (Songs) -- History and criticism / United States / Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784 / Wheatley, Phillis, 1753-1784 -- Religion / Women and literature / Women and literature -- United States -- History / Women authors
• ISBN: 069101647X, 9780691016474, 0691016399, 9780691016399, 1400822599, 9781400822591