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Chapter 5. Showing and feeling the atrocities of slavery

Abolition, human rights violations, and the aesthetics of the drastic in popular German theatre, circa 1800
  • Sigrid G. Köhler
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A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery
This chapter is in the book A Comparative Literary History of Modern Slavery

Abstract

German-language playwrights inscribed themselves into the international debate on abolition at the end of the 18th century, making themselves part of a transnational political communicative space. Most of these authors are rarely read today, except for August von Kotzebue, the most frequently performed German-language author of this period. These authors usually conceived their plays as discourse dramas that reflected the contradiction between the ideals of the Enlightenment and the system of enslavement and denounced slavery as a violation of human rights. To this end, as an analysis of Kotzebue’s play The Negro Slaves will show, they transgress the sentimentalist aesthetics prevailing in contemporary theatre and develop an implicit poetics and aesthetics of what I call the ‘drastic.’

Abstract

German-language playwrights inscribed themselves into the international debate on abolition at the end of the 18th century, making themselves part of a transnational political communicative space. Most of these authors are rarely read today, except for August von Kotzebue, the most frequently performed German-language author of this period. These authors usually conceived their plays as discourse dramas that reflected the contradiction between the ideals of the Enlightenment and the system of enslavement and denounced slavery as a violation of human rights. To this end, as an analysis of Kotzebue’s play The Negro Slaves will show, they transgress the sentimentalist aesthetics prevailing in contemporary theatre and develop an implicit poetics and aesthetics of what I call the ‘drastic.’

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. General introduction xi
  5. Slavery, literature and the emotions 1
  6. Part One. Slavery, sentiment and affect
  7. Chapter 1. Slavery, sentimentality and the abolition of affect 18
  8. Chapter 2. Race and affect in Gustave de Beaumont’s Marie, ou L’esclavage aux Etats‑Unis 34
  9. Chapter 3. Touching difference and colonial space 50
  10. Part Two. Slavery between literary codes
  11. Chapter 4. In search of home 78
  12. Chapter 5. Showing and feeling the atrocities of slavery 95
  13. Chapter 6. Politics and faith, slavery and abolition in nineteenth-century Brazilian literature 110
  14. Chapter 7. Melodramatic tableaux vivants 136
  15. Part Three. Pity, identification and interpellation
  16. Chapter 8. Before sentimental empire 158
  17. Chapter 9. “No one can imagine my feelings” 173
  18. Chapter 10. Orientalism, slavery and emotion 191
  19. Chapter 11. Haunting slavery 207
  20. Part Four. Affective ties
  21. Chapter 12. Testamentary manumission and emotional bonds in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue 226
  22. Chapter 13. Affection amidst domination in a post-slavery society 239
  23. Chapter 14. Bárbora and Jau 254
  24. Part Five. First-person voices
  25. Chapter 15. Scenes of emotion in French early-modern travel writing from the Caribbean 272
  26. Chapter 16. Fear and love in Matanzas 289
  27. Chapter 17. The blood-stained-gate 307
  28. Volume 1. Biographical descriptions 325
  29. Name index 331
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxvi.05koh

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Preface vii
  4. General introduction xi
  5. Slavery, literature and the emotions 1
  6. Part One. Slavery, sentiment and affect
  7. Chapter 1. Slavery, sentimentality and the abolition of affect 18
  8. Chapter 2. Race and affect in Gustave de Beaumont’s Marie, ou L’esclavage aux Etats‑Unis 34
  9. Chapter 3. Touching difference and colonial space 50
  10. Part Two. Slavery between literary codes
  11. Chapter 4. In search of home 78
  12. Chapter 5. Showing and feeling the atrocities of slavery 95
  13. Chapter 6. Politics and faith, slavery and abolition in nineteenth-century Brazilian literature 110
  14. Chapter 7. Melodramatic tableaux vivants 136
  15. Part Three. Pity, identification and interpellation
  16. Chapter 8. Before sentimental empire 158
  17. Chapter 9. “No one can imagine my feelings” 173
  18. Chapter 10. Orientalism, slavery and emotion 191
  19. Chapter 11. Haunting slavery 207
  20. Part Four. Affective ties
  21. Chapter 12. Testamentary manumission and emotional bonds in eighteenth-century Saint-Domingue 226
  22. Chapter 13. Affection amidst domination in a post-slavery society 239
  23. Chapter 14. Bárbora and Jau 254
  24. Part Five. First-person voices
  25. Chapter 15. Scenes of emotion in French early-modern travel writing from the Caribbean 272
  26. Chapter 16. Fear and love in Matanzas 289
  27. Chapter 17. The blood-stained-gate 307
  28. Volume 1. Biographical descriptions 325
  29. Name index 331
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