Slave Narratives as a Transnational Genre

• Autores: Nele Sawallisch
• Localización: The Routledge Handbook of Black Canadian Literature / Andrea A. Davis (ed. lit.), Leslie Sanders (ed. lit.), 2025, ISBN 9780367742003, págs. 199-211
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The genre of the slave narrative is of fundamental importance to the Canadian canon. It educates readers about the conditions, actions, engagements, projects, and hopes of Black people in what we call Canada today. Specifically in the context of early Canada before Confederation, the slave narrative obligates us to reconsider what we understand by the term and what we seem to know about the genre to begin with, most importantly by denouncing its reputation as a US-American form. In testing the significance of the border to the United States, the slave narrative accentuates the connection between national and transnational historiography, as well as literary history. Against the backdrop of these far-reaching suggestions, this chapter outlines what we may understand as the slave narrative in, from, and about Canada, where we can find it, and what it can teach us about the genre and the literary history of Canada and the United States. From the vantage point of pre-Confederation Canada, the slave narrative is constitutive not only of US literature but emerges as a transnational genre that must be located ab origo in Canadian literature as well.