Description

A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South’s oral tradition

Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy in the American South in the decades just prior to the Civil War by showing that rural people had access to a remarkable variety of things to read. Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible—which has its origins in the eighteenth century—has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture.

A Literate South: Reading before Emancipation

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Hardback by Beth Barton Schweiger

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A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South’s oral tradition... Read more

    Publisher: Yale University Press
    Publication Date: 13/08/2019
    ISBN13: 9780300112535, 978-0300112535
    ISBN10: 030011253X

    Number of Pages: 288

    Non Fiction , ELT & Literary Studies , Education

    Description

    A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South’s oral tradition

    Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy in the American South in the decades just prior to the Civil War by showing that rural people had access to a remarkable variety of things to read. Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible—which has its origins in the eighteenth century—has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture.

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