UID:
edocfu_9960947640202883
Format:
1 online resource (285 pages)
ISBN:
0-300-24539-4
Content:
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.
Note:
Frontmatter --
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Contents --
,
Preface --
,
Acknowledgments --
,
Introduction. The Presence of Print --
,
Part One. A Good English Education --
,
Part Two. A Musical, Literary, and Christian Miscellany --
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Epilogue. A Literate South --
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Abbreviations --
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Notes --
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Index
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In English.
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0-300-11253-X
Language:
English
DOI:
10.12987/9780300245394
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