The mid-nineteenth century in the U.S. proved to be a very productive time for literary production: for the first time in the short history of American Literature the technical and economical progress enabled writers to live of their work as authors rather than having to earn their living through other jobs while writing on the side. With regards to content, the literary field was so fertile that about a century later Francis Otto Matthiessen defined the period of 1850 to 1855 as the American Renaissance and argued that especially the works of Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Emerson and Hawthorne during these five years stood out in struggling to define an authentic American Literary Identity. Matthiessen commented that these five authors concerned themselves explicitly with language and the function of literature. This narrow conception of the American Renaissance has since then been commented on and expanded to encompass not only white men but women and persons of colour by various critics.
The rapid growth of readership and the publishing industry enabled those groups which were deprived of rights by the law (women, especially married ones, had scarcely any legal rights, slaves had none and were considered as property) to write and be read: female writers were producing bestsellers and slave narratives were also frequently read. I will argue in this text that Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern/Sara Parton and the eponymous slave narrative by Frederick Douglass called The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (referred to as Narrative further in the text) both reflect upon the function of literature as a means of gaining power by using language and the process of writing as central themes. I will use Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse in order to show how Douglass’s Narrative reflects upon the exclusion of slaves from the discourse and which possibility for counter discourse is presented in the text. Moreover, I will show how Ruth Hall refers to and engages with its contemporary discourse of female literature in order to subvert stereotypic gender norms. Both texts present writing as a possibility for gaining agency and taking part in the literary discourse, thereby showing that American Literary Identity was far more diverse in Antebellum America than Matthiessen’s choice of writers would suggest.
- Arbeit zitieren
- Anonymous (Autor:in), 2020, Writing for Power. Writing as a Means of Emancipation in Fanny Fern’s "Ruth Hall" and Frederick Douglass’ "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave", München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/1718725
