Programs
Seminar in American Literary History
Thursday, February 22, 2001
"Barbaric Traffic":
Commerce and Antislavery in the Atlantic World,
1750-1810
Philip Gould
Brown University
Thursday, February 22, 2001, at 4:30 p.m.
Elmarion Room, Goddard-Daniels House
190 Salisbury Street, Worcester, Massachusetts
PRCIS: The initial version of the Declaration of Independence refers to
the slave trade as an "execrable commerce." Jefferson was not alone in
such a denunciation. Scores of English and American antislavery writers
during the late eighteenth century--including Anthony Benezet, Thomas
Clarkson, Olaudah Equiano, Samuel Hopkins, John Newton, and James Ramsay,
among others--focused on the "iniquity" of the slave trade by employing a
language that called attention to the state of Anglo-American manners.
This paper explores the literature of Anglo-American antislavery in light
of that obsession with an unenlightened--or "barbaric"--form of commerce.
What I call the "commercial jeremiad" redefined the meaning of "free"
trade during a transitional historical era, and it shaped the aesthetic
forms and conventions of antislavery literature. This paper resituates
antislavery as not just a historical but a literary and cultural movement.
By rethinking antislavery in this context, I argue, we might see its
relations to other kinds of literary and sentimental writing and to the
representation (and instability) of the concept of "race."
Refreshments will be provided during the discussion of the paper.
Afterwards, a supper, with wine, will be served in the dining room of the
Goddard-Daniels House at $15.00 per person. The entre will be spinach
and mushroom lasagna. If you wish to stay for supper, please send your
check in that amount to arrive at AAS by Tuesday, February 20. The Society
regrets that it is unable to make refunds for dinner after that date.
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