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Sto caricando le informazioni... A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded (1853)di Harriet Beecher Stowe
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"In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin, an instant classic that received overwhelming acclaim by Northerners and other abolitionist readers. Southerners, conversely, strongly denied the novel's accuracy. The following year Stowe answered pro-slavery critics with this unique bestseller, a meticulous and thoughtful defense of her work, which cites real-life equivalents to her characters. Southern readers were further incensed by this follow-up volume, their wrath in no small part inflamed by a Yankee woman's presuming to tell men what to think. A critical aspect of Stowe's Key is her critique of the law's support of not only the institution of slavery but also the mistreatment of individual slaves. As in the original novel, her challenge extends beyond slavery to the law itself. American society's first widely read political novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin influenced the development of the nation's literature, particularly in terms of protest writing. This supplement to the novel offers valuable insights into a historical and literary landmark"-- Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
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Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)813.3Literature English (North America) American fiction Middle 19th Century 1830-1861Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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The Key is more than 500 pages of letters, reports, witness accounts, first-person accounts (including slave narratives), newspaper advertisements (slaves for sale and notices of runaway slaves), legal documents, and other sorts of documentation. There are more pages of document verbatims than there are Stowe’s comments on them.
When I first realized that I was about to read 500 plus pages of dreary reporting, I thought it would be sufficient to simply mention the content and go on to other reading. But I was at once captured by the documents Stowe used to draw the character of Haley, the slave trader to whom Mr. Shelby sells two of his slaves when he finds himself hopelessly in debt. It is a negotiated trade: Haley gets Shelby’s top hand, Uncle Tom, and Harry, the handsome child of Mrs. Shelby’s chamber maid Eliza, in exchange for settling the debt. From letters of the day, written by one businessman to another, and from a courtroom transcript of a slavetrader’s testimony, Stowe drew her character of Haley.
From there, I read on--documents that inspired the characters of Mr. And Mrs. Shelby, George Harris, Eliza, Uncle Tom, Miss Ophelia, the St. Clares, Simon Legree, and the Quakers who sheltered Eliza, George, and Harry as they made their way to Canada. Stowe claims she worked just as hard at finding the “good” among the pro-slavery forces as she did in locating the bad. Her documentation upholds her claim. Time and again, her fictional world used incidents from the real world, even to the extent to put into the mouths of her characters the exact words and phrases used by the people she studied.
Though Uncle Tom’s Cabin easily stands alone as a testimony to the evils of slavery, I recommend without reservation the reading of The Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I would even consider it essential reading if you, too, as I did, assume that Harriet Beecher Stowe used a broad pen to draw her characters larger than life in order to make her point. There actually was a slave woman who jumped from ice patch to ice patch across the Ohio River in her desperation to escape her pursuers. ( )