Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)
Kathleen E. Dubs: Frederick Douglass: An Intellectual Slave Narrative
Frederick Douglass: An Intellectual Slave Narrative Kathleen E. Dubs 1 Introduction The years between 1703 and 1944 saw the appearance of more than six thousand accounts of life under the system of institutionalized slavery in the United States. 1 Taken as a whole, the works in this genre —and little more than one hundred exist as book-length narratives —share certain characteristics: the brutality of abuse, the subhuman conditions, the religious piety of the slaves and the attendant hypocrisy of the slaveholders, the various methods of survival, and the occasional account of a good master. As Houston A. Baker, Jr. has poin ted out, they also represent "the narrator's ... heroic journey from slavery to freedom, and his subsequent dedication to abolitionist principles and goals." 2 Although many are sufficiently exciting to qualify as adventure stories (cf. The Life of Olaudah Fquiano) and one (Inädents in the Life of a Slave Girl ) rivals the drama of The Diary of Anne Frank, more often than not the accounts are not autobiographies as we know them: histories of inner growth and change, and reflections on experience, as well as iterations of the external events themselves. Published largely under the auspices of northern abolitionists, they served to rally public opinion against the evil of slavery and, therefore, provided example upon example of the brutality of slave life. One narrative, however, not only stands apart from (and above) the type, but also falls within the genre of autobiography as it is more traditionally considered: The Life of Frederick Douglass. Many scholars think that Douglass shaped his narrative on the model of Equiano's, which Henry Louis Gates, Jr. suggests served as a "silent second text.'" In support, Gates cites Equiano's "subtle rhetorical strategies such as the overlapping of the slave's arduous journey to freedom and his simultaneous journey from orality to literacy," and his 1 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Introduction, in The Classic Slave Narratives, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Mentor Books [Division of the Penguin Group]: 1987), p. ix. 2 Houston A. Baker, Jr. ed. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (New York: Penguin Books: 1982), pp. 8-9. 3 Gates, p. ix. Eger |ournal of English Studies, Volume III, 2002 25-38
