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Author Chiles, Katy L

Title Transformable Race: Surprising Metamorphoses in the Literature of Early America
Published Oxford : Oxford Scholarship Online, [2014]

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction: surprising metamorphoses -- Becoming colored in Occom and Wheatley's early America -- To make Samson Occom "so" -- "To make a poet black" -- The political bodies of Benjamin Franklin and Hendrick Aupaumut -- You are what you eat; or, Franklin's practice makes (almost) perfect -- Hendrick Aupaumut's own color -- Transforming into natives: Crèvecoeur, Marrant, and Brown on becoming Indian -- Passing as, transforming into Crèvecoeur's American race -- John Marrant becoming Cherokee -- Edgar Huntly's unsettling transformation -- Doubting transformable race: -- Equiano, Brackenridge, and the textuality of natural history -- To quote and to question: Olaudah Equiano's provocative ends -- Brackenridge and the limits of writing natural history -- Epilogue: interiorizing racial metamorphosis: -- The Algerine captive's language of sympathy
Summary Racial thought at the close of the 18th century differed radically from that of the 19th century, when the concept of race as a fixed biological category would emerge. Instead, many early Americans thought that race was an exterior bodily trait, incrementally produced by environmental factors, and continuously subject to change. While historians have documented aspects of 18th century racial thought, this is the first book to identify how this thinking informs the figurative language in the literature of this crucial period
Notes Print version record
Subject American literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism
Race in literature.
Race awareness in literature.
Race relations in literature.
Human skin color in literature.
Black people -- Race identity -- United States -- History -- 18th century
Indians of North America -- Ethnic identity -- History -- 18th century
White people -- Race identity -- United States -- History -- 18th century
American literature
Black people -- Race identity
Human skin color in literature
Indians of North America -- Ethnic identity
Race awareness in literature
Race in literature
Race relations in literature
White people -- Race identity
United States
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 0199313504
9780199313501
0199313512
9780199313518
0199350728
9780199350728
9781306082013
1306082013