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Tragic Mulatto
The tragic mulatto is a fictional character type that frequently appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person (a "mulatto"), who is depressed, or even suicidal, because they fail to completely fit into the "white world" or the "black world". As such, the "tragic mulatto" is depicted as the victim of a society that is divided by race, where there is no place for one who is neither completely "black" nor "white". Tragic mulatta The female "tragic octoroon" was a stock character of abolitionist literature: a light-skinned woman raised in her father's household as though she were white, until his bankruptcy or death reduces her to a menial position and she is eventually sold. She may even be unaware of her status before being so reduced.Kathy Davis.Headnote to Lydia Maria Child's 'The Quadroons' and 'Slavery's Pleasant Homes'." This character allowed abolitionists to draw attention to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Literature
American literature is literature written or produced in the United States of America and in the British colonies that preceded it. The American literary tradition is part of the broader tradition of English-language literature, but also includes literature produced in languages other than English. The American Revolutionary Period (1775–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. An early novel is William Hill Brown's '' The Power of Sympathy'', published in 1791. The writer and critic John Neal in the early-to-mid-19th century helped to advance America toward a unique literature and culture, by criticizing his predecessors, such as Washington Irving, for imitating their British counterparts and by influencing writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, who took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry David T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Quadroons
"The Quadroons" is a short story written by American writer Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) and published in '' The Liberty Bell'' in 1842. The influential short story depicts the life and death of a mixed-race woman and her daughter in early nineteenth century America, a slave-owning society. Child originated the trope of the "tragic mulatta", which became well-known in the anti-slavery literature of the time, was taken up also by many other writers. Years later, Harriet Jacobs's autobiography ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'' (edited by Lydia Maria Child) featured the same theme, but with important changes, effectively giving her an agency Child's main characters never had. Background Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was an influential writer who advocated for Native Americans, women, and enslaved people. Already an abolitionist, she and her husband joined a group of antislavery reformers under the influence of William Lloyd Garrison in the 1830s. Scholars credit Child wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 – February 22, 1911) was an American abolitionist, suffragist, poet, temperance activist, teacher, public speaker, and writer. Beginning in 1845, she was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States. Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at the age of 20. At 67, she published her widely novel ''Iola Leroy'' (1892), placing her among the first Black women to publish a novel. As a young woman in 1850, Harper taught domestic science at Union Seminary in Columbus, Ohio, a school affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). In 1851, while living with the family of William Still, a clerk at the Pennsylvania Abolition Society who helped refugee slaves make their way along the Underground Railroad, Harper started to write anti-slavery literature. After joining the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853, Harper began he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iola Leroy
''Iola Leroy'', ''or Shadows Uplifted'', an 1892 novel by Frances E. W. Harper, is one of the first novels published by an African-American woman. While following what has been termed the "sentimental" conventions of late nineteenth-century writing about women, it also deals with serious social issues of education for women, passing, miscegenation, abolition, reconstruction, temperance, and social responsibility. Characters Iola Leroy and family Iola Leroy, the principal character of the novel. Harriet Johnson, Iola Leroy's grandmother. While a slave of Nancy Johnson, she resists a whipping. As a punishment, she is sold. Robert Johnson. He is still a child when separated from his mother Harriet. His enslaver, Nancy Johnson, sees him as a "pet animal" and teaches him to read. As a young man, he becomes the leader of a group of slaves who decide to seek refuge with the Union army during the Civil War. He enlists in a colored regiment and is promoted to lieutenant. On account ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernardo Guimarães
Bernardo Joaquim da Silva Guimarães (; August 15, 1825 – March 10, 1884) was a Brazilian poet and novelist. He is the author of the famous romances '' A Escrava Isaura'' and '' O Seminarista''. He also introduced to Brazilian poetry the ''verso bestialógico'' (, roughly ''silly verse''), also referred to as ''pantagruélico'' (in a reference to Rabelais's character Pantagruel) — poems whose verses are very nonsensical, although very metrical. Under the ''verso bestialógico'', he wrote polemical erotic verses, such as "O Elixir do Pajé" (''The Witchdoctor's Elixir'') and "A Origem do Mênstruo" (''The Origin of Menstruation''). A non-erotic poem written in ''verso bestialógico'' is "Eu Vi dos Polos o Gigante Alado" (''From the Poles I Saw the Winged Giant''). He is patron of the fifth chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. Biography Bernardo Joaquim da Silva Guimarães was born in the city of Ouro Preto, in Minas Gerais, to João Joaquim da Silva Guimarães (a poet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Escrava Isaura (novel)
''A Escrava Isaura'' (, ''Isaura, The Slave Girl'') is a novel written by the Brazilian writer Bernardo Guimarães. It was first published in 1875 by Casa Garnier publishers in Rio de Janeiro. With this novel, Bernardo Guimarães became very famous throughout that country, even said to be admired by Brazil's last Emperor Dom Pedro II. In 1976, a Brazilian telenovela adaptation produced by Rede Globo was titled '' Escrava Isaura''. It was a worldwide success. In 2004, a second Brazilian telenovela was produced by TV Record. It was also titled '' A Escrava Isaura''. This adaptation also aired on Telemundo in the United States. This version was dubbed into Spanish and titled ''La Esclava Isaura''. The title character is so pale-skinned that she is "almost white", making her the Brazilian equivalent of Eliza, from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Story Isaura, the daughter of a Portuguese worker and a freed black woman, is an enslaved girl who endures hard times befor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner "Dion" Boucicault (né Boursiquot; 26 December 1820 – 18 September 1890) was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. ''The New York Times'' hailed him in his obituary as "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century,"; he and his second wife, Agnes Robertson Boucicault, applied for and received American citizenship in 1873. Life and career Early life Boucicault was born Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot in 1820 Dublin, where his family lived on Gardiner Street. His mother was Anne Maria Laura Beresford, sister of the poet and mathematician George Darley. The Darleys were an important Anglo-Irish people, Anglo-Irish Dublin family influential in many fields and related to the Guinnesses by marriage. Anne was married to Samuel Smith Boursiquot, of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Octoroon
''The Octoroon'' is a play by Dion Boucicault that opened in 1859 at The Winter Garden Theatre, New York City. Extremely popular, the play was kept running continuously for years by seven road companies. Among antebellum melodramas, it was considered second in popularity only to ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852). Both were anti-slavery works. Boucicault adapted the play from the novel ''Quadroon'' (1856) by Thomas Mayne Reid. It explores the lives of free whites, and enslaved mixed-race and black Americans resident at a Louisiana plantation called Terrebonne. It sparked debates about the abolition of slavery and the role of theatre in politics. It contains elements of Romanticism and melodrama. The word octoroon signifies a person of one-eighth African ancestry and typically seven-eighths white. In comparison, a quadroon would have one quarter African ancestry and a mulatto for the most part has historically implied half African ancestry. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' cites ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of North Carolina Press
The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a not-for-profit university press associated with the University of North Carolina. It was the first university press founded in the southern United States. It is a member of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses) and publishes both scholarly and general-interest publications, as well as academic journals, in subjects that include southern/US history, military history, political science, gender studies, religion, Latin American/Caribbean studies, sociology, food studies, and books of regional interest. It receives some financial support from the state of North Carolina and an endowment fund. Its office is located in Chapel Hill. History In 2006, UNC Press started the distribution company Longleaf Services as an affiliate. See also * List of English-language book publishing companies * List of university presses References External links * Longleaf Services [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by Slavery in the United States, enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the Northern United States, American North, while provoking widespread anger in the Antebellum South, South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day. Life and work Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811.McFarla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uncle Tom's Cabin
''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two Volume (bibliography), volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and Slavery in the United States, slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the American Civil War". Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary, was part of the religious Beecher family and an active Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist. She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve. In the United States, ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Soldier's Story
''A Soldier's Story'' is a 1984 American mystery drama film directed and produced by Norman Jewison, adapted by Charles Fuller from his Pulitzer Prize-winning '' A Soldier's Play''. It is a murder mystery set in a segregated regiment of the U.S Army commanded by White officers and training in the Jim Crow South. In a time and place where a Black commissioned officer is bitterly resented by nearly everyone, an African-American JAG captain investigates the murder of an African-American drill sergeant in Louisiana following American entry into World War II. As the investigation proceeds, the events leading up to the sergeant's murder are shown in flashbacks. The cast is led by Howard Rollins and Adolph Caesar. Other actors include Art Evans, David Alan Grier, Larry Riley, David Harris, Robert Townsend, and Patti LaBelle. Denzel Washington, still at the beginning of his career, appears in a supporting role. Several actors reprise their roles from the stage version. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
