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Gothic slavery

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This book explores how British and Black Atlantic writers used the Gothic to represent slavery, rebellion and emancipation, revealing how the genre shaped evolving ideas of race, revolution and ref...
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  • 13 April 2027
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Gothic slavery examines how the Gothic became a key mode for representing slavery, rebellion and emancipation in the transatlantic Age of Revolution. Focusing on British and Black Atlantic writing between 1789 and 1834, the book traces how Gothic tropes—imprisonment, persecution, haunted landscapes and demonic figures—were deployed to articulate the violence of slavery and the uncertainties of reform. Through close readings of texts by Olaudah Equiano, Charlotte Smith, William Earle, John Thelwall, Matthew Lewis, Robert Wedderburn and Mary Prince, the study reveals tensions between abolitionist demands and gradualist visions of amelioration. It shows how Black Atlantic writers reworked the Gothic to challenge racialised representations of rebellion and to expose the lived realities of enslavement. By situating these works within revolutionary and imperial contexts, the book offers a new account of the Gothic’s role in shaping modern racial and political imaginaries.
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Price: £85.00
Pages: 256
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Publication Date: 13 April 2027
ISBN: 9781526180018
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

FICTION / Gothic, LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Slavery, Slavery and abolition of slavery, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

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Stephanie M. Volder is Research Assistant and Lecturer at Aarhus University, Denmark

Introduction: Slavery as Gothic
1 The Black Jacobins of the Age of Revolution
2 White cannibalism and Gothic sensibility in Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1789)
3 The failure of sentimentalism and colonial terror in William Earle’s Obi or, The History of Three-Fingered Jack (1800)
4 Slavery and Gothic sensibility in The Story of Henrietta (1800)
5 The spectre of Haiti in John Thelwall’s The Daughter of Adoption (1801)
6 Rebellious devils and absentee masters: imagining reform and containing revolt in Matthew G. Lewis’s Journal of a West India Proprietor (1834)
7 Gothic insurrection and the hauntings of history in Hamel, the Obeah Man (1827)
8 The horrors of women’s enslavement in the writings of Robert Wedderburn and Mary Prince
Conclusion: Gothic afterlives