This thesis is concerned with literature connected with the abolition of slavery in British colonies. The thesis will treat the topic of the abolitionist movement from the perspective of social, cultural and literary history from the beginnings until the abolition of slavery in British colonies in the Caribbean in 1833 with the Slavery Abolition Act. The thesis will focus on the discourse of race and slavery. The chosen authors represent different opinions and perspectives as the discussion will focus on sentimental poetry, travel writings as well as slave narratives. The chief aim is to identify and define the strategies of abolitionist discourse and the rhetorical practices which it employed especially in shaping the image of Africans and how the hegemonic discourse of sentimentalism influenced their writing. The first part of the thesis is concerned with establishing a theoretical background and the establishing of the literary traditions and customs of the eighteenth century, definition of the sentimental discourse and philosophies of the Enlightenment. This will be framed by a definition of Edward Said's "Orientalism" as well as Paul Gilroy's theory of the "Black Atlantic," which will enable us to define the space between Britain, Africa and the Caribbean, where the history of slavery of...

Literary scholars have been examining and recreating the experiences of “bonded” female characters within Toni Morrison’s novels for decades. However, the distinct experiences of these enslaved women, that are also mothers have not been astutely examined by scholars and deserves more attention. My thesis fleshes out the characterization of several of Morrison’s bonded-mothers and identifies them as a part of a developing controlling image and theory, called the bondmother. Situating these characters within this category allows readers to trace their journeys towards freedom and personal redemption. This character tracing will occur by examining the following Toni Morrison novels: Beloved (1987) and Paradise (1997). In order to fully examine the experiences of these characters it will be necessary for me to expand the definition of bondage and mother. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Esta dissertação analisa as construções discursivas do trabalho livre e escravo na pela Mãe de José de Alencar publicada em 1860. A pesquisa foi predominantemente exploratória quanto ao seu objetivo, utilizou o método bibliográfico buscando nos textos de Marx, Engels, Freyre, Freitas, Fausto, Gorender, Costa, Ianni e outros autores o surgimento do trabalhador assalariado e indícios que levassem à compreensão sobre como se deu a passagem do trabalho escravo para o livre no Brasil do século XIX. A análise tem como corpus a pela Mãe, de José de Alencar, procurando levantar como o autor representa as relações de trabalho na segunda metade do século XIX e as possíveis inferências dessa representação. A partir da Análise Dialógica do Discurso (ADD), de Baktin e o Círculo, buscou-se compreender como são representadas no discurso literário teatral as relações entre senhores e escravos urbanos e entre as classes sociais que se reorganizam e os trabalhadores livres. Como resultado a pesquisa revelou como o autor inova ao trazer como protagonista uma escravizada durante a vigência da escravidão no país, mostrando que esta pode se colocar como uma trabalhadora livre, em suas falas, apesar de sua condição de escrava na pele e expõe no microcosmo da obra, como se constitui o trabalho escravo e livre na época. Mostra ainda o espanto diante da necessidade de mulheres pertencentes a estratos sociais mais favorecidos trabalharem. Alencar buscou construir em suas obras uma identidade para o país que se constituía, e denunciou as mazelas da escravidão em obras como Mãe e O Demônio Familiar (1857). Entretanto, a despeito de ter levado ao palco a escravidão, a invisibilidade dos escravos e seus descendentes permanece, ainda hoje, nos milhões de brasileiros negros e mulatos alijados de seus direitos. A pesquisa aponta a importância da redescoberta de obras como Mãe que mantém viva a memória da escravidão e que passados 129 anos de seu término oficial, seus efeitos ainda se fazem sentir, cabendo a cada brasileiro fazer uso de suas capacidades para escrever uma nova história para o trabalho neste país: trabalho livre e digno para cada habitante desta terra, independente da cor de sua pele ou condição social. / This dissertation analyses the discursive constructions of the free and enslaved work on José de Alencar’s play Mãe, published in 1860. The research was mainly exploratory when it came to its objectives and utilized the bibliographic method, searching on the texts of Marx, Engels, Freyre, Freitas, Fausto, Gorender, Costa, Ianni and other authors for the emergence of the salaried work and indications that led to comprehending how the transition from enslaved work to free work happened in Brazil in the XIX century. The analysis has as a corpus José de Alencar’s play Mãe, and it tries to raise how the author represents the work relations in the second half of the XIX century and the possible inferences of such representation. From Bakhtin and the Circle’s Dialogical Discourse Analysis (DDA), it is attempted to comprehend on the theatrical literary speech how it is represented the relations between master and slave and between the social classes that restructured themselves and the free workers. As a result, the research revealed how the author innovates by bringing as the main character a female slave, during the existence of slavery in the country, showing that she can be a free worker, in her lines, despite her condition of a slave on her skin and exposes on the work’s microcosm how it is constituted the free and enslaved work at the time. It also shows the astonishment before the need of higher-stratum-belonging women to work. Alencar attempted to build on his works an identity for the constituting country, and despite denouncing the badness of slavery on works such as Mãe e Demônio Familiar (1857), the invisibility of the slaves and their descendants remains in millions of black and mulatto Brazilians depleted from their rights. The research pointed out the importance of rediscovering works such as Mãe that do not allow us to forget that slavery happened and that 129 years since its official end, its effects are still felt, making it fitting that every Brazilian, making use of their own capacity, write a new history for work in this country: free and dignified work for every inhabitant in this land, independent of color of skin or social condition.

Dans l’Amérique et les Caraïbes des XIXe et XXe siècles, l’œuvre du poète national est au cœur d’un trafic d’images qui nourrit un lien social fragile dans un temps où les collectivités reposent moins sur un lien direct entre leurs membres que sur un lien imaginé. Prenant ses distances vis-à-vis des représentations en circulation à son époque, comme les représentations exotiques de la nature, le poète offre une vision démocratique ambitieuse pour l’avenir de la communauté à travers des images nouvelles du territoire, du peuple, de l’esclavage et de l’histoire. L’ethos auctorial encourage l’appropriation de ce discours par le lecteur en désignant le poète comme figure de référence. Mais c’est surtout à travers son procédé d’écriture qui met à mal les normes littéraires de son temps que celui-ci est à même d’influer sur la société. Plutôt qu’ils ne parviennent à saisir l’esprit de leur peuple, Whitman, Martí et Césaire participent par leur travail sur le fragment, les formes populaires ou le tremblement du sens à la création d’un devenir collectif. / In 19th and 20th centuries America and West Indies, the national poet’s works lay at the centre of a traffic of images. This traffic feeds the fragile social ties of young collectivities, at a time when communities are bound by imagination rather than by direct contact between their members. Distancing themselves from the representations of the community circulating at that time, like the exotic images of the New World’s nature, the poet offers an ambitious democratic vision for the future which is channeled through images of the territory, the people, slavery and history. The poet’s ethos encourages the reader to appropriate this discourse by presenting the author as a role model. However, it is mainly thanks to his style, at odds with the literary norms of his time, that the poet is able to act upon society. Whitman, Martí and Césaire do not so much contrive to capture their people’s spirit, as they participate through their work on the fragment, on popular poetical forms or on the destabilizing of meaning, in the creation of a common devenir.