Domestic and Foreign Issues in American Barbary Captivity Narratives
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Date
2016
Authors
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Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri
Abstract
This research seeks to explore the domestic and foreign issues reflected
in Barbary captivity narratives, with a particular focus on American
captivity accounts. Methodologically, it draws heavily on a
multidisciplinary approach, with an emphasis on historicist and
postcolonial theories. Mary Louise Pratt and Edward W. Said are some of
the scholars from whom it has borrowed its critical paradigms. Some of
these paradigms like “Orientalism” are redefined to make them fit into
this research. The latter concept, for example, is redefined primarily as a
study of ideological captivity. It follows that this research does not look
at “captivity” simply as a harrowing physical experience but also as an
ideological phenomenon. In addition to corporeal captivity, one can also
be captured by texts. Captivity is also looked at as an epistemological
tool reflecting and thinking about issues prevalent in the captive’s
society. Consequently, the corpus of this research includes two
anthologies of Barbary captivity accounts and a nineteenth century
political essay on the Regency of Algiers. The former are respectively
edited by Daniel J.Vitkus (Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary
Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, 2001) and Paul
Baepler (White Slaves, African Masters: An Anthology of American
Captivity Narratives, 1999), and the latter is Sketches of Algiers by
William Shaler (1826). The British Barbary captivities included in
Vikus’s anthology are analyzed in an introductory chapter, the purpose of
which is to underline the continuity in function of Barbary captivities
recounted by pre-modern English/British captives and the Barbary
captivities narrated by American captives in the colonial and postindependence
periods. This research shows that British and American
captivities can be placed in a spectrum reflecting the same pattern of
thematic and formal development. In accordance with the historical
contexts of their publication and the balance of power relations from
which these captivities are narrated, one finds on one side of this
spectrum captivities dealing with postcolonial themes and on the other
side captivities concerned mostly with imperial concerns. In line with the
re-definition of the topos of captivity, this research devotes a whole
chapter to the study of orientalism-cum-imperialism in Shaler’s Sketches
of Algiers as an ideological captivity.
Description
253f. ; 30cm (+ CD Rom)
Keywords
Barbary captivity, Barbary Narrative, America: barbary
Citation
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