ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates that the generative potential of transatlantic studies to loosen demographic frames and challenge conveniently linear histories. It discusses considers some of the key ways in which nineteenth-century transatlantic exchanges engaged with and transformed contemporary discourses on race and racial difference. The book also crosses a range of genres, from epic verse and drama to nonfiction prose and adventure novels. It focuses on the implications of the Atlantic for normative gender models. The book provides the theoretical potential informing Paul Gilroy's pioneering articulation of a Black Atlantic' as an international and transcultural formation. This allied with a marginalized group but nonetheless productive of a body of discourse instrumental in the development of the Enlightenment and modernity itself, particularly as it is articulated in the bounded and bounding modern nation-state.
