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Plagiarama! : William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions by Geoffrey Sanborn is a nonfiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is Plagiarama! : William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions about?

William Wells Brown (1814–1884) was a vocal abolitionist, a frequent antagonist of Frederick Douglass, and the author of Clotel , the first known novel by an African American. He was also an extensive plagiarist, copying at least 87,000 words from close to 300 texts. In this critical study of Brown's work and legacy, Geoffrey Sanborn offers a novel reading of the writer's plagiarism, arguing the act was a means of capitalizing on the energies of mass-cultural entertainments popularized by showmen such as P. T. Barnum. By creating the textual equivalent of a variety show, Brown animated antislavery discourse and evoked the prospect of a pleasurably integrated world. Brown's key dramatic protagonists were the "spirit of capitalization"—the unscrupulous double of Max Weber's spirit of capitalism—and the "beautiful slave girl," a light-skinned African American woman on the verge of sale and rape. Brown's unsettling portrayal of these figures unfolded within a riotous patchwork of second-hand texts, upset convention, and provoked the imagination. Could a slippery upstart lay the groundwork for a genuinely interracial society? Could the fetishized image of a not-yet-sold woman hold open

Who reads Plagiarama! : William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions?

Author

Geoffrey Sanborn

Publisher

Columbia University Press Columbia University Press

Published

2016

Language

EN

ISBN

9780231540582

Category

nonfiction

Subjects

Poetry, History, Literary Criticism