The Clotel/Miralda/Clotelle, so revealed, evolving as history evolved, shows itself to be a masterpiece of the nineteenth-century American novel. That role is a commentary on human nature. That astonishing and evil aspect of her character is inherited her mother was the same way with Jefferson. For her, love is illegal, and childbirth is automatically illegitimate. An electronic scholarly edition created in 2006 unites the four versions in a hypertext that embeds each version in its original epitext. Clotel is a forbidden love because she is not legally allowed to be married to anyone. Reception was hampered by the fact that many critics believed the version they were reading was the only version, and the different versions were regularly treated as separate novels. Slave women heroines, white in appearance, led Black militant critics in the 1970s to find the novel insufficiently Black. Powerfully reimagining this story, and weaving together a variety of contemporary source materials, Brown fills the novel with daring escapes and.
CLOTEL OR THE PRESIDENTS DAUGHTER (1853).
The story evolves from an abolitionist novel to a post-abolitionist romance, radically changing each time. The first novel published by an African American, Clotel takes up the story, in circulation at the time, that Thomas Jefferson fathered an illegitimate mulatto daughter who was sold into slavery. Plotting a Pragmatic National Philosophy: William Wells Browns. Brown published three further versions of Clotel: as Miralda in 1860, as Clotelle in 1864 and as Clotelle again in 1867. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.William Wells Brown’s Clotel or the President’s Daughter (London, 1853) gives a fictive account of the slave daughters and granddaughters of Thomas Jefferson. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. Book Synopsis First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage-then sells her. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. First published in December 1853, Clotel was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves.
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