Revisiting Slave Narratives I : Les avatars contemporains des récits d’esclaves

Abstract

One cannot fail to be impressed by the number of works of fiction relating to slavery and the slave trade, writing back to the original slave narratives of the 18th and 19th centuries. If the African-American authors of the 1960s and 1970s are now well-known, they find an echo in works written more recently in the 1980s and 1990s by American, African, African-American and Caribbean writers. About twenty writers come under the scrutiny of renowned scholars, offering perspectives into what makes it so necessary today for writers, critics and readers alike to revisit, reassess and reappropriate the canonical texts of slavery and post-slavery literature. The specificity of this collection is to focus on neo-slave novels while bringing together African-American and Caribbean authors.