Dr. Eric Lamore
Departamento de Inglés

 

“Textual Failure and Early Black Atlantic Literature”

 

If I am awarded a research release for the Fall 2017 semester, I will continue to produce peer-reviewed scholarship on the literatura related or written by individuals of African descent that was first published before 1800. Specifically, I will write about why Briton Hammon’s Narrative (1760), Quobna Ottobah Cugoano’s Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked and Traffick of the Commerce of the Human Species (the authorized 1787 and 1791 editions) and John Marrant’s Journal (1790) were “textual failure [s]” (Books).

Most of my peer-reviewed publications have studied the best-selling-autobiographical narratives from the early black Atlantic literary canon. At this point, I wish to study the opposite phenomenon: to interrogate the reasons why some early black Atlantic literary texts were commercial and political failures. In one part of this Project, I will analyze why Hammon’s narrative and Marrant’s journal did not continue to appear in print after the first editions of these texts. In another part of the project, I will document the revisions Cugoano made to his condensed 1791 version of Thoughts to determine how the failure of his 1787 edition Thoughts shaped his revision process and his choice to address only the “Sons of Africa” in the 1791 edition. This Project aims to contribute new knowledge on the publishing histories of these texts as well as the cultural, ideological, and political forces that determined whether or not a text from the early black Atlantic literary canon was commercially and politically successful.