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"Melville's (inter)national burlesque: whiteface, blackface, and "Benito Cereno".(Herman Melville)(Critical essay)

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From: ATQ (The American Transcendental Quarterly)
Date: 20070601
Author:Richards, Jason

In his Narrative of Voyages and Travels (1817), Amasa Delano, the good-natured and affable captain from Massachusetts, recalls being an unknowing witness to a slave rebellion aboard the Spanish slaver Tryal, which he encounters off the coast of Chile one morning. Delano takes his whaleboat to meet the vessel after it enters the bay where his ship is anchored. He learns the crew has suffered trials at sea, orders supplies to restore them, and then returns to his boat later that day, all the while vexed by the suspicious behavior of the ship's slaves and ostensible captain, Benito ...

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