Slavery and the Romantic Imagination. Debbie Lee

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       Slavery and the Romantic Imagination

       Slavery and the Romantic Imagination

      DEBBIE LEE

      UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS

      Philadelphia

       Copyright © 2002 University of Pennsylvania Press

       All rights reserved

       10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

       First paperback edition 2004

       Published by

       University of Pennsylvania Press

       Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Lee, Debbie.

      Slavery and the Romantic imagination / Debbie Lee.

      p. cm.

      Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

       ISBN 0-8122-3636-X (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8122-1882-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)

      1. English literature—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Slavery in literature. 3. Literature and society—Great Britain—History—19th century. 4. Romanticism—Great Britain. 5. Africa—In literature. 6. Blacks in literature. I. Title.

       PR468.S55 L44 2002

820.9'355—dc21

2001041542

      To my families

      Contents

       List of Illustrations

       Texts and Abbreviations

       Introduction

       Part I: History and Imagination

       1 British Slavery and African Exploration: The Written Legacy

       2 The Distanced Imagination

       Part II: Hazards and Horrors in the Slave Colonies

       3 Distant Diseases: Yellow Fever in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

       4 Intimacy as Imitation: Monkeys in Blake’s Engravings for Stedman’s Narrative

       Part III: Fascination and Fear in Africa

       5 African Embraces: Voodoo and Possession in Keats’s Lamia

       6 Mapping Interiors: African Cartography, Nile Poetry, and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Witch of Atlas”

       Part IV: Facing Slavery in Britain

       7 Proximity’s Monsters: Ethnography and Anti-Slavery Law in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

       8 Intimate Distance: African Women and Infant Death in Wordsworth’s Poetry and The History of Mary Prince

       Afterword

       Notes

       Selected Bibliography

       Index

       Acknowledgments

      Illustrations

       1. Detail, Thomas Clarkson, 1789

       2. Blake, “Europe Supported by Africa & America”

       3. Blake, “Mecco & Kishee Kishee Monkeys”

       4. Blake, “Quato & Saccawinkee Monkeys”

       5. Stubbs, Green Monkey

       6. Blake, illustration for Gay’s Fables

       7. Camper’s “facial angles”

       8. Aldrovandi, De quadrupedibus

       9. Aldrovandi, De quadrupedibus

       10. Krug, The Fall of Man

       11. Bruegel, “Zwei Affen”

       12. Goya, Los Caprichos

       13. Tyson, Orang-Outang

       14. Blake, “Coromantyn Free Negro”

       15. Blake, “Private Marine”

       16. Blake, frontispiece, Visions

       17. Stedman, watercolor, 1776

       18. Barlow, “Manner of Sleeping”

       19. Blake, “Group of Negros”

       20. Blake, “Negro hung alive”

       21. Blake, “Sculls”

       22. Blake, “Family of Negro”

       23. Blake, “Breaking on the Rack”

       24. Blake, “Surinam Planter”

       25. Blake, “March thro’ a swamp”

       26. Blake, “Flagellation of Female Slave”

       27. Blake, “Skinning of Aboma Snake”

       28. Blake, “Graman Quacy”

       29. Africa, Speed’s Prospect

       30. Sayer, New and Correct Map of Africa

       31. Sayer, New Map of Africa

       32. Sayer, Africa with all its States

       33. Africa, Rennell’s Geographical System

       34. Brookes, New Map of Africa

       35. “Narina, a Young Gonaquais”