The History of African American Theatre

Writing AssignmentsAnd

William Wells Brown

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Close Reading

• The Central Question: How does the author craft literary language and manipulate staging elements to convey complex, nuanced meaning?

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William Wells Brown (1814-1884)• Landmarks in African American Literary History• William Wells Brown was the first African-American to publish a novel, a play, a travel book, a military study of his people, and a study

of black sociology. Throughout his life he was committed to the abolition of slavery. He made eloquent speeches putting forward ideas for reform. Later in life he took up the cause of the temperance movement.

• Primary Works • Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, 1847Three Years in Europe; or Places I Have Seen and People I Have

Met, 1852; Clotel; or, The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States, 1853; The Escape; or, A Leap of Freedom. A Drama in Five Acts, 1858; Memoir of WWB, An American Bondman. Written by Himself, 1859; The Black Man. His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, 1863; The Negro in the American Rebellion. His Heroism and His Fidelity, 1867; The Rising Son; or, The Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race, 1873; and My Southern Home: or, The South and Its People, 1880.

• Recent Sholarship• Chaney, Michael A. Fugitive Vision: Slave Image and Black Identity in Antebellum Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2007. • Ernest, John. Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794-1861. Chapel Hill: U of North

Carolina P, 2004. • - - -. The Escape; Or, A Leap for Freedom: A Drama in Five Acts. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 2001. • James, Jennifer C. A Freedom Bought with Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil War to World War II. Chapel Hill: U of

North Carolina P, 2007. • Levine, Robert S. ed. Clotel, or the President's Daughter. Boston: Bedford, 2000. • Nelson, Emmanuel S. ed. African American Autobiographers: A Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. • - - -. African American Authors, 1745-1945: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. • Stadler, Gustavus. Troubling Minds: The Cultural Politics of Genius in the United States, 1840-1890. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,

2006.

A Brief Biography of Brown William Wells Brown (1814-1884): A Brief Biography William Wells Brown was the first African-American to write a novel, a play, and a travel book. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky in

1815. His father was the white owner of the plantation on which Brown was born. Brown held many diverse jobs as a youth which provided him with firsthand knowledge of the slave era South which aided him in his

writing. Brown escaped from slavery in January 1834. During his escape he received help from an Ohio Quaker named Wells Brown (whose name he adopted when he became a free man). After his refuge he taught himself how to read and write. Brown became an active abolitionist and activist in the anti-slavery movement while working for a journalist for the abolitionist cause.

He was also important in THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, which helped slaves escape to freedom in Canada. It was during this time that Brown married Elizabeth Schooner, a free black woman. They had three children together. After moving to Buffalo, Brown continued to participate in the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD and also spoke publicly on abolition, women's rights, peace, and temperance.

In 1843 Brown was invited to lecture for the Anti-Slavery Society and gained renown as a public figure. The American Peace Society chose him as their representative to the Peace Congress in Europe in 1849.

While Brown was in Europe he delivered over a thousand speeches and wrote some of his most important work, including the first African American novel Clotel; or The President's Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States.

He left Europe in 1854. In 1858 he published the first play by an African-American. While Brown was in Europe his wife died. In 1860 he married Annie Elizabeth Grey. Brown continued his political and literary activities. He was a major supporter of black

recruitment efforts during the CIVIL WAR. He continued to write many literary and historical works including The Black Man: His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements,

and The Negro In American Rebellion: His Heroism and His Fidelity. His final book My Southern Home, or The South and Its People, appeared in 1880.

It is important to note that Brown's importance in African-American literacy is not only based on his interesting stylistic blends of melodrama, documentary, abolitionist tract, political critique but also in his willingness to address the issues of sexual exploitation of female slaves. Interestingly enough, the novel implicates Thomas Jefferson in this practice. The novel also challenges the inconsistencies that fail to protect the human rights of millions of African-Americans. Brown was able to address such issues in his literary works that reached a broad audience.

In addition to writing his own works Brown was a contributor to Frederick Douglass’s paper, the Liberator, and to the National Anti-Slavery Standard and the London Daily News. Brown died on Nov. 6, 1884 in his home in Chelsea, Massachusettes.

French Romanticism

French romanticism is a highly eclectic phenomenon. It includes an interest in the historical novel, the romance, traditional myths (and nationalism) and the "roman noir" (or Gothic novel), lyricism, sentimentalism, descriptions of the natural world (such as elegies by lakes) and the common man, exoticism and orientalism, and the myth of the romantic hero. Foreign influences played a big part in this, especially those of Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. French Romanticism had ideals diametrically opposed to French classicism and the classical unities (see French literature of the 17th century), but it could also express a profound loss for aspects of the pre-revolutionary world in a society now dominated by money and fame, rather than honor.

Key ideas from early French Romanticism: "le vague des passions" (waves of sentiment and passion) - Chateaubriand maintained that while the imagination was

rich, the world was cold and empty, and rationalism and civilization had only robbed men of their illusions; nevertheless, a notion of sentiment and passion continued to haunt men.

"le mal du siècle" (the pain of the century) - a sense of loss, disillusion, and aporia, typified by melancholy and lassitude.

The major battle of romanticism in France was fought in the theater. The early years of the century were marked by a revival

of classicism and classical-inspired tragedies, often with themes of national sacrifice or patriotic heroism in keeping with the spirit of the Revolution, but the production of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830 marked the triumph of the romantic movement on the stage (a description of the turbulent opening night can be found in Théophile Gautier). The dramatic unities of time and place were abolished, tragic and comic elements appeared together and metrical freedom was won. Marked by the plays of Friedrich Schiller, the romantics often chose subjects from historic periods (the French Renaissance, the reign of Louis XIII of France) and doomed noble characters (rebel princes and outlaws) or misunderstood artists (Vigny's play based on the life of Thomas Chatterton).

Minstrelsy and Tricksters (American Genius?):Cato and Sampey

Groups

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