Name: The Escape
Price: 69.42 RON
Availability: OnlineOnly
Author: William Wells Brown
ISBN: 9780359789108

The Escape

William Wells Brown

en Limba Engleză Paperback – 13 iul 2019

A well-known nineteenth-century abolitionist and former slave, William Wells Brown was a prolific writer and lecturer who captivated audiences with readings of his drama The Escape; or, a Leap for Freedom (1858). The first published play by an African American writer, The Escape explored the complexities of American culture at a time when tensions between North and South were about to explode into the Civil War. This new volume presents the first-edition text of Brown’s play and features an extensive introduction that establishes the work’s continuing significance.

The Escape centers on the attempted sexual violation of a slave and involves many characters of mixed race, through which Brown commented on such themes as moral decay, white racism, and black self-determination. Rich in action and faithful in dialect, it raises issues relating not only to race but also to gender by including concepts of black and white masculinity and the culture of southern white and enslaved women. It portrays a world in which slavery provided a convenient means of distinguishing between the white North and the white South, allowing northerners to express moral sentiments without recognizing or addressing the racial prejudice pervasive among whites in both regions.

John Ernest’s introductory essay balances the play's historical and literary contexts, including information on Brown and his career, as well as on slavery, abolitionism, and sectional politics. It also discusses the legends and realities of the Underground Railroad, examines the role of antebellum performance art—including blackface minstrelsy and stage versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin—in the construction of race and national identity, and provides an introduction to theories of identity as performance.

A century and a half after its initial appearance, The Escape remains essential reading for students of African American literature. Ernest's keen analysis of this classic play will enrich readers’ appreciation of both the drama itself and the era in which it appeared.

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Notă biografică

William Wells Brown was an American abolitionist, novelist, dramatist, historian, lecturer, and formerly enslaved man whose writings made him one of the most important Black literary and political figures of the nineteenth century. Born into slavery in Kentucky around 1814, Brown escaped in 1834 and became a major voice in the anti-slavery movement, speaking and writing in the United States and abroad. His firsthand knowledge of slavery, combined with his political urgency and literary ambition, shaped works that challenged American racism, exposed the brutality of bondage, and argued for freedom, dignity, and full humanity.Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter, first published in London in 1853, is widely recognized as the first novel published by an African American author. He also wrote Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, plays, histories, travel writing, and anti-slavery works that helped build the literature of abolition and Black resistance. His career stands at the intersection of African American literature, slave narrative, political activism, historical writing, and the struggle to make the United States answer for the contradiction between its democratic ideals and the reality of slavery.