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It be's hard sometimes: The rhetorical invention of black female persona in pre-emancipatory slave narratives
Abstract
This study explores the dimensions of rhetoric as a means for liberation and change for black women in the antebellum period of American history. Given the rhetorical emphasis of the project, this dissertation examines the relationship among invention, persona, and liberation in the discourse of nineteenth-century female slave narratives. In so doing, it examines the presence of inventional resources under conditions of legal subjugation, which permitted the creation of an emancipatory discourse. Three female slave narratives frame the inquiry. They include The History of Mary Prince, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, and The Narrative of Old Elizabeth. Chapter One provides an introduction and historical orientation to black female slave narratives. Chapter Two explores the distinction between rhetorical invention and literary creation. Chapter Three investigates rhetoric as a socio-political act in the invention and transformation of audience. Chapter Four examines the emergence of the black female slave's voice as resistant and revolutionary out of which a discourse of black womanhood is constructed. Chapter Five explores the dialectical tension between black and white visions of womanhood. The concluding chapter suggests the pedagogical implications of black female slave narratives and their significance to critical education. A rhetorical look at female slave narratives provides the reader with multiple insights of black women's search for self-liberation and the means by which they symbolically constituted and transformed reality to create personae despite the social exigencies which served as barriers to their freedom.
Subject Area
Communication|Womens studies|Minority & ethnic groups|Sociology
Recommended Citation
Davis, Olga Idriss, "It be's hard sometimes: The rhetorical invention of black female persona in pre-emancipatory slave narratives" (1994). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9513713.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9513713