Literature and Culture
- LAST REVIEWED: 10 May 2010
- LAST MODIFIED: 10 May 2010
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0037
- LAST REVIEWED: 10 May 2010
- LAST MODIFIED: 10 May 2010
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199730414-0037
Introduction
Atlantic literary studies is a young field that is in the midst of rapid change and expansion. The field developed later than that of Atlantic history, in part because the study of literature has long been organized in relation to national cultures; as such, Atlantic or “transatlantic” literature, as a field, requires a reconsideration of the basic organization or conceptualframework of literary studies. That reconsideration emerged powerfully in the form of Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic in 1993 (see General Overviews)—a book that described a diasporic African-Atlantic culture linking Africa, Europe, and the Americas by the routes of the slave trade. Joseph Roach’s Cities of the Dead (see General Overviews) subsequently turned to the methodology of performance studies to propose an account of “circum-Atlantic” culture in which locations around the Atlantic littoral were linked by the traveling performances (and residues of these performances) of peoples and cultures that circulated there in the 18th century and beyond. The non-national frameworks for understanding the development of literary and cultural traditions proposed by Gilroy and Roach served as inaugural openings in the field of Atlantic literary studies—openings that moved decisively beyond accounts of the unidirectional westward movement of European culture to the New World that New Historicist critics (writing in the 1980s and 1990s) found in the literatures of imperialism and encounter. The category of the Atlantic remains, nonetheless, subject to interpretive framing: the Atlantic may be considered a geographical entity, an economic configuration, a historical conjunction, or a political formation, and each of these definitions has ramifications for the study of literature and culture. Accordingly, a signal feature of much of the most exciting work in the field of Atlantic literary studies is its engagement with the question of what constitutes a methodology for considering literary work outside a more familiar literary-national framework. Atlantic literary studies joins a host of current literary methodologies that are engaged in postnational considerations of the literary (keyed to our globalizing present), including postcolonial studies, transnationalism, hemispheric studies, world systems theory, and considerations of literature and globalization, world literature, and cosmopolitanism. Current work by critics in transatlantic studies extends well into the 20th century, examining figures from Ralph Waldo Emerson, to Henry James, to Toni Morrison. However, this bibliography focuses on 16th- through 18th-century materials—that is, primarily on materials that deal with the Atlantic world prior to the emergence of the 19th-century nationalisms that have long been central to defining and understanding literary canons. As such, these works engage with issues of colonialism, imperialism, the slave trade, European–New World encounters, indigenous peoples and literacies, performance, anticolonial and republican revolution, early capitalism, colonial–metropolitan exchange and circulation, and competing sovereignties—all as explored within the literary and cultural imaginations of those who inhabited the Atlantic world.
General Overviews
The materials listed in this section include a range of the most influential engagements in the field of literary and cultural Atlantic studies. Gilroy 1993 offers a foundational account of the Atlantic as a cultural field by focusing on African diasporic culture in the Atlantic world. Roach 1996, also an important early voice in this field, describes a “circum-Atlantic” culture of performance in the Atlantic world. Giles 2001 uses the concept of the Atlantic in less radical ways to describe a literary genealogy linking the reciprocal developments of English and American literature. Fischer 2004 builds upon and also moves beyond Gilroy, arguing that a wide range of cultural artifacts can be read to reveal the agency of Africans as cultural actors in the Atlantic world. More recently, Baucom 2005, Doyle 2008, and Elmer 2008 offer examples of the ways in which the Atlantic world, as a cultural framework, offers new possibilities for the analysis of literature. For Doyle, the Atlantic framework serves as the basis for a groundbreaking history of the novel; Baucom’s compelling meditation on the Zong tragedy (Baucom 2005) teases out relations between literature, philosophy, and finance capital; and Elmer 2008 turns to literature as a means of exploring the development of political concepts of sovereignty in relation to race. Finally, Slauter, et al. 2008, together with the round table of responses to Slauter’s article, offers a useful comparative discussion of Atlantic literary studies and Atlantic historical studies.
Baucom, Ian. Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
Focusing on the Zong tragedy of 1781, in which more than one hundred slaves were thrown off a ship for the sake of making an insurance claim, Baucom examines the violence at the center of the economic and legal structures of 18th-century Atlantic trade and capital accumulation. A remarkable philosophical and literary meditation on the discourse of finance capital and counter-discourses of “melancholy realism” and human rights.
Doyle, Laura. Freedom’s Empire: Race and the Rise of the Novel in Atlantic Modernity, 1640–1940. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008.
Argues that the novel is developed from an Anglo-Atlantic discourse of freedom—rooted in Anglo-Saxonism as formed in relation to English colonialism in the Americas—together with an African diasporic discourse of freedom. Impressive in its reach and assigns a central role to the Atlantic world in the development of the novel as a genre.
Elmer, Jonathan. On Lingering and Being Last: Race and Sovereignty in the New World. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Argues that key understandings of modern political sovereignty have developed from the colonial encounters in the Atlantic world between Europeans, enslaved Africans, and Native Americans. Superb readings of the way in which the New World becomes the location for reinventing sovereignty; emphasis on the formal capacity of literature to represent the contradictions and complications of race and political sovereignty.
Fischer, Sibylle. Modernity Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery in the Age of Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.
A compelling addition and rejoinder, of sorts, to Gilroy’s foundational work in the field of the black Atlantic; argues that New World Africans had a more persistent and legible voice in the Atlantic world than Gilroy acknowledges and reads a variety of unusual texts as a means of accessing the “modernity” of culture as it takes shape in relation to racialized repression.
Giles, Paul. Transatlantic Insurrections: British Culture and the Formation of American Literature, 1730–1860. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Argues for the formative role of British literature in American literature and vice versa. Often cited as exemplary of transatlantic literary studies, but in tracing a tradition that is almost exclusively Anglo-American, tends to repeat an older genealogical model of US literature as the offspring of Britain and to discount the significance of the African diaspora and Native American culture in Atlantic literary traditions.
Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
Groundbreaking account of the Atlantic as a field of literary and cultural study in relation to the African diaspora.
Roach, Joseph. Cities of the Dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996.
Uses performance studies to generate new understanding of a “circum-Atlantic” field of culture characterized by performance, memory, erasure and “surrogation” or substitution of actors over time in the Atlantic world. Rich and powerful account of how culture circulates in the Atlantic world.
Slauter, Eric, with Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Allison Games, Eliga Gould, and Bryan Waterman. “The ‘Trade Gap’ in Atlantic Studies: A Forum on Literary and Historical Scholarship.” William and Mary Quarterly 65, no. 1 (January 2008): 135–186.
Discusses the relation between recent work in the field of Atlantic history and Atlantic literary studies, with useful accounts of scholarship and methodologies in the two fields. Responses to Slauter by historians (Games and Gould) and literary scholars (Dillon and Waterman) provide an overview of concepts of Atlantic studies.
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Article
- Abolition of Slavery
- Abolitionism and Africa
- Africa and the Atlantic World
- African American Religions
- African Religion and Culture
- African Retailers and Small Artisans in the Atlantic World
- Age of Atlantic Revolutions, The
- Alexander von Humboldt and Transatlantic Studies
- America, Pre-Contact
- American Revolution, The
- Anti-Catholicism and Anti-Popery
- Argentina
- Army, British
- Arsenals
- Art and Artists
- Asia and the Americas and the Iberian Empires
- Atlantic Biographies
- Atlantic Creoles
- Atlantic History and Hemispheric History
- Atlantic Migration
- Atlantic New Orleans: 18th and 19th Centuries
- Atlantic Trade and the British Economy
- Atlantic Trade and the European Economy
- Bacon's Rebellion
- Baltic Sea
- Baptists
- Barbados in the Atlantic World
- Barbary States
- Benguela
- Berbice in the Atlantic World
- Black Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Bolívar, Simón
- Borderlands
- Bourbon Reforms in the Spanish Atlantic, The
- Brazil
- Brazil and Africa
- Brazilian Independence
- Britain and Empire, 1685-1730
- British Atlantic Architectures
- British Atlantic World
- Buenos Aires in the Atlantic World
- Cabato, Giovanni (John Cabot)
- Cannibalism
- Capitalism
- Captain John Smith
- Captivity
- Captivity in Africa
- Captivity in North America
- Caribbean, The
- Cartier, Jacques
- Castas
- Catholicism
- Cattle in the Atlantic World
- Central American Independence
- Central Europe and the Atlantic World
- Charleston
- Chartered Companies, British and Dutch
- Cherokee
- Childhood
- Chinese Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World
- Chocolate
- Church and Slavery
- Cities and Urbanization in Portuguese America
- Citizenship in the Atlantic World
- Class and Social Structure
- Climate
- Clothing
- Coastal/Coastwide Trade
- Cod in the Atlantic World
- Coffee
- Colonial Governance in Spanish America
- Colonial Governance in the Atlantic World
- Colonialism and Postcolonialism
- Colonization, Ideologies of
- Colonization of English America
- Communications in the Atlantic World
- Comparative Indigenous History of the Americas
- Confraternities
- Constitutions
- Continental America
- Cook, Captain James
- Cortes of Cádiz
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cotton
- Credit and Debt
- Creek Indians in the Atlantic World, The
- Creolization
- Criminal Transportation in the Atlantic World
- Crowds in the Atlantic World
- Cuba
- Currency
- Death in the Atlantic World
- Demography of the Atlantic World
- Diaspora, Jewish
- Diaspora, The Acadian
- Disease in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Production and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Domestic Slave Trades in the Americas
- Dreams and Dreaming
- Dutch Atlantic World
- Dutch Brazil
- Dutch Caribbean and Guianas, The
- Early Modern Amazonia
- Early Modern France
- Economy and Consumption in the Atlantic World
- Economy of British America, The
- Edwards, Jonathan
- Elites
- Emancipation
- Emotions
- Empire and State Formation
- Enlightenment, The
- Environment and the Natural World
- Ethnicity
- Europe and Africa
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Northern
- Europe and the Atlantic World, Western
- European Enslavement of Indigenous People in the Americas
- European, Javanese and African and Indentured Servitude in...
- Evangelicalism and Conversion
- Female Slave Owners
- Feminism
- First Contact and Early Colonization of Brazil
- Fiscality
- Fiscal-Military State
- Food
- Forts, Fortresses, and Fortifications
- Founding Myths of the Americas
- France and Empire
- France and its Empire in the Indian Ocean
- France and the British Isles from 1640 to 1789
- Free People of Color
- Free Ports in the Atlantic World
- French Army and the Atlantic World, The
- French Atlantic World
- French Emancipation
- French Revolution, The
- Gardens
- Gender in Iberian America
- Gender in North America
- Gender in the Atlantic World
- Gender in the Caribbean
- George Montagu Dunk, Second Earl of Halifax
- Georgia in the Atlantic World
- German Influences in America
- Germans in the Atlantic World
- Giovanni da Verrazzano, Explorer
- Glasgow
- Glorious Revolution
- Godparents and Godparenting
- Great Awakening
- Green Atlantic: the Irish in the Atlantic World
- Guianas, The
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Hanoverian Britain
- Havana in the Atlantic World
- Hinterlands of the Atlantic World
- Histories and Historiographies of the Atlantic World
- Honor
- Huguenots
- Hunger and Food Shortages
- Iberian Atlantic World, 1600-1800
- Iberian Empires, 1600-1800
- Iberian Inquisitions
- Idea of Atlantic History, The
- Impact of the French Revolution on the Caribbean, The
- Indentured Servitude
- Indentured Servitude in the Atlantic World, Indian
- India, The Atlantic Ocean and
- Indigenous Knowledge
- Indigo in the Atlantic World
- Insurance
- Internal Slave Migrations in the Americas
- Interracial Marriage in the Atlantic World
- Ireland and the Atlantic World
- Iroquois (Haudenosaunee)
- Islam and the Atlantic World
- Itinerant Traders, Peddlers, and Hawkers
- Jamaica in the Atlantic World
- Jefferson, Thomas
- Jesuits
- Jews and Blacks
- Labor Systems
- Land and Propert in the Atlantic World
- Language, State, and Empire
- Languages, Caribbean Creole
- Latin American Independence
- Law and Slavery
- Legal Culture
- Leisure in the British Atlantic World
- Letters and Letter Writing
- Lima
- Literature and Culture
- Literature of the British Caribbean
- Literature, Slavery and Colonization
- Liverpool in The Atlantic World 1500-1833
- Louverture, Toussaint
- Loyalism
- Lutherans
- Mahogany
- Manumission
- Maps in the Atlantic World
- Maritime Atlantic in the Age of Revolutions, The
- Maritime Literature
- Markets in the Atlantic World
- Maroons and Marronage
- Marriage and Family in the Atlantic World
- Maryland
- Material Culture in the Atlantic World
- Material Culture of Slavery in the British Atlantic
- Medicine in the Atlantic World
- Mennonites
- Mental Disorder in the Atlantic World
- Mercantilism
- Merchants in the Atlantic World
- Merchants' Networks
- Mestizos
- Mexico
- Migrations and Diasporas
- Minas Gerais
- Miners
- Mining, Gold, and Silver
- Missionaries
- Missionaries, Native American
- Money and Banking in the Atlantic Economy
- Monroe, James
- Moravians
- Morris, Gouverneur
- Music and Music Making
- Napoléon Bonaparte and the Atlantic World
- Nation and Empire in Northern Atlantic History
- Nation, Nationhood, and Nationalism
- Native American Histories in North America
- Native American Networks
- Native American Religions
- Native Americans and Africans
- Native Americans and the American Revolution
- Native Americans and the Atlantic World
- Native Americans in Cities
- Native Americans in Europe
- Native North American Women
- Native Peoples of Brazil
- Natural History
- Networks for Migrations and Mobility
- Networks of Science and Scientists
- New England in the Atlantic World
- New France and Louisiana
- New York City
- News
- Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World
- Nineteenth-Century France
- Nobility and Gentry in the Early Modern Atlantic World
- North Africa and the Atlantic World
- Northern New Spain
- Novel in the Age of Revolution, The
- Oceanic History
- Oceans
- Pacific, The
- Paine, Thomas
- Papacy and the Atlantic World
- Paris
- People of African Descent in Early Modern Europe
- Peru
- Pets and Domesticated Animals in the Atlantic World
- Philadelphia
- Philanthropy
- Phillis Wheatley
- Piracy
- Plantations in the Atlantic World
- Plants
- Poetry in the British Atlantic
- Political Participation in the Nineteenth Century Atlantic...
- Polygamy and Bigamy
- Port Cities, British
- Port Cities, British American
- Port Cities, French
- Port Cities, French American
- Port Cities, Iberian
- Ports, African
- Portugal and Brazile in the Age of Revolutions
- Portugal, Early Modern
- Portuguese Atlantic World
- Potosi
- Poverty in the Early Modern English Atlantic
- Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Voyages
- Pregnancy and Reproduction
- Print Culture in the British Atlantic
- Proprietary Colonies
- Protestantism
- Puritanism
- Quakers
- Quebec and the Atlantic World, 1760–1867
- Quilombos
- Race and Racism
- Race, The Idea of
- Reconstruction, Democracy, and United States Imperialism
- Red Atlantic
- Refugees, Saint-Domingue
- Religion
- Religion and Colonization
- Religion in the British Civil Wars
- Religious Border-Crossing
- Religious Networks
- Representations of Slavery
- Republicanism
- Rice in the Atlantic World
- Rio de Janeiro
- Rum
- Rumor
- Russia and North America
- Sailors
- Saint Domingue
- Saint-Louis, Senegal
- Salvador da Bahia
- Scandinavian Chartered Companies
- Science and Technology (in Literature of the Atlantic Worl...
- Science, History of
- Scotland and the Atlantic World
- Sea Creatures in the Atlantic World
- Second-Hand Trade
- Settlement and Region in British America, 1607-1763
- Seven Years' War, The
- Seville
- Sex and Sexuality in the Atlantic World
- Shakers
- Shakespeare and the Atlantic World
- Ships and Shipping
- Signares
- Silk
- Slave Codes
- Slave Names and Naming in the Anglophone Atlantic
- Slave Owners In The British Atlantic
- Slave Rebellions
- Slave Resistance in the Atlantic World
- Slave Trade and Natural Science, The
- Slave Trade, The Atlantic
- Slavery and Empire
- Slavery and Fear
- Slavery and Gender
- Slavery and the Family
- Slavery, Atlantic
- Slavery, Health, and Medicine
- Slavery in Africa
- Slavery in Brazil
- Slavery in British America
- Slavery in British and American Literature
- Slavery in Danish America
- Slavery in Dutch America and the West Indies
- Slavery in New England
- Slavery in North America, The Growth and Decline of
- Slavery in the Cape Colony, South Africa
- Slavery in the French Atlantic World
- Slavery, Native American
- Slavery, Public Memory and Heritage of
- Slavery, The Origins of
- Slavery, Urban
- Smuggling
- São Paulo
- Sociability in the British Atlantic
- Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts...
- Soldiers
- South Atlantic
- South Atlantic Creole Archipelagos
- South Carolina
- Sovereignty and the Law
- Spain, Early Modern
- Spanish America After Independence, 1825-1900
- Spanish American Port Cities
- Spanish Atlantic World
- Spanish Colonization to 1650
- Subjecthood in the Atlantic World
- Sugar in the Atlantic World
- Swedish Atlantic World, The
- Technology, Inventing, and Patenting
- Textiles in the Atlantic World
- Texts, Printing, and the Book
- The American West
- The Danish Atlantic World
- The French Lesser Antilles
- The Fur Trade
- The Spanish Caribbean
- Theater
- Time(scapes) in the Atlantic World
- Tobacco
- Toleration in the Atlantic World
- Transatlantic Political Economy
- Travel Writing (in the Atlantic World)
- Tudor and Stuart Britain in the Wider World, 1485-1685
- Universities
- USA and Empire in the 19th Century
- Venezuela and the Atlantic World
- Violence
- Visual Art and Representation
- War and Trade
- War of 1812
- War of the Spanish Succession
- Warfare
- Warfare in Spanish America
- Warfare in 17th-Century North America
- Warfare, Medicine, and Disease in the Atlantic World
- Weavers
- West Indian Economic Decline
- Whitefield, George
- Whiteness in the Atlantic World
- William Blackstone
- William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1611)
- William Wilberforce
- Wine
- Witchcraft in the Atlantic World
- Women and the Law
- Women Prophets