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"If not in the word, in the sound": Frederick Douglass's mediation of literacy through song.(Critical essay)

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From: ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly)
Date: 20070301
Author:Messmer, David

Frederick Douglass's passage into literacy does not enable him, while a slave, to openly resist his masters. In fact, despite the huge emphasis that both the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and his 1855 narrative, My Bondage and My Freedom, place upon the importance of literacy as necessary to his intellectual development, it is through a physical confrontation with Covey that, "a slave was made a man" (69). Thus, the immense critical attention (1) surrounding Douglass's passage into literacy, though crucial to an understanding of his place within the abolition ...

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