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Chapters (27)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Half-Title Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Acknowledgments
  6. Dedication
  7. Cast
  8. Prologue
  9. Act One
  10. Scene 2
  11. Scene 3
  12. Scene 4
  13. Scene 5
  14. Scene 6
  15. Scene 7
  16. Scene 8
  17. Act Two
  18. Scene 2
  19. Scene 3
  20. Scene 4
  21. Scene 5
  22. Scene 6
  23. Scene 7
  24. Scene 8
  25. An Interview with Rita Dove
  26. Biographical Note
  27. Back Cover

The range of topics that this assignment encourages is part of the pleasure of teaching this text and part of the students’ pleasure when they read one another’s papers. Many students have written essays on how slave songs function as code-language on the plantation. One student, for example, explored the moment that Augustus remains in the house with Amalia despite the slaves’ increased singing as the moment of crisis in the play. This student explored the history of how slave songs were used as coded speech, allowing communication between individuals on a plantation as well as communication between plantations. This research came to bear on her assertion that Augustus’s decision to stay in the home when the slaves called him back to the plantation is central to the drama of Augustus’s interracial identity.

OTHER ESSAY TOPICS

  • The complicated relationship between Hector and Amalia
  • The snake cults in African religions
  • The multiple biblical as well as African-based religious connotations of Hector’s seeming obsession with killing snakes
  • The association of voodooism with Scylla
  • How voodoo coexists with the “master’s” religion

RECOMMENDED SUPPLEMENTAL READING

  • The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. John W. Blassingame
  • Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery. Charles Johnson & Patricia Smith
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. An American Slave. Frederick Douglass
  • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Harriet Jacobs
  • White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South. Martha Hodes
  • Black Slave Narratives. John Bayliss
  • Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South Carolina. Marli Weiner
  • “Where I Can Read my Title Clear”: Literacy, Slavery, and Religion in the Antebellum South. Janet Duitsman Cornelius

III. English 129: The European Literary Tradition

Taught by Diana R. Paulin, at the time Assistant Professor of American Studies and English at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Another approach to Rita Dove’s play is to study it in the context of the European tradition and ask why this play also works when placed in the U.S. antebellum context. Think about the ways in which the play addresses both “universal” questions about familial dynamics and taboos, as well as particular aspects of U.S. history (such as slavery, miscegenation, and the cult of true womanhood). Also, look at how Dove’s position as poet laureate informs her role as a national storyteller, similar to Greek epic poets, and influences her decision to use this narrative to play out the “drama” of slavery and rebellion in the U.S.

POINTS TO PONDER