ABSTRACT
First Published in 2005. In 19th century plantation literature, the runaway slave in the swamp was a recurring bogey-man whose presence challenged myths of the plantation system. By escaping to the swamps with its wild and threatening connotations, the runaway gained an invisibility that was more threatening to the institution than open rebellion. In part, the proslavery plantation novel served to transform that image of the free slave in the swamp from its untouchable, abstract state to a form that could be possessed, understood, and controlled. Essentially, writers defending the institution would conjure forth the rebellious image in order to dispel it safely.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter Chapter One|18 pages
Introduction: Into the Dismal Swamp
section Section One|66 pages
Identity and the Dynamics of Space
chapter Chapter Two|20 pages
Sambo, Nat, and the Gentleman Planter: Notions of Self on the Plantation
chapter Chapter Three|22 pages
The Slave in the Swamp: Claiming Space
chapter Chapter Four|18 pages
John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn and the Birth of Plantation Literature
section Section Two|70 pages
Literary Swamps of the 1850s
chapter Chapter Five|18 pages
Proslavery Writers in the Wake of Uncle Tom's Cabin
chapter Chapter Six|22 pages
African American Views of the Swamp: Slave Narratives and Early Fiction
chapter Chapter Seven|22 pages
Stowe's Dred and the Discourse of Violence in the 1850s
section Section Three|88 pages
Reconciliation and Lost Cause