Slave Evangelicalism, Shouting, and the Beginning of African American Writing

• Published in: Early American literature Vol. 53; no. 1; pp. 69 - 85
• Main Author: JONES, DOUGLAS A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press 01.01.2018; The University of North Carolina Press
• Subjects: Aesthetics; African American literature; African Americans; Allen, Richard; Allusion; American literature; Antebellum period; Authenticity; Authorship; Bibliographic literature; Biographies; Black people; Christianity; Cultural heritage; Culture; Davies, Samuel; Double consciousness; Enslaved people; Eschatology; Essays; Evangelicalism; Exegesis & hermeneutics; God; Hegemony; Ideology; Individualism; Literacy; Literary criticism; Literary devices; Literary influences; Logic; Morality; Musical performances; Narrative techniques; Politics; Religion; Slavery; Slaves; Source materials; Spirituality; Training; Writing; United Kingdom; North Carolina; New York; United States > US; North America; Virginia
• ISSN: 0012-8163; 1534-147X; 1534-147X
• DOI: 10.1353/eal.2018.0003

This essay argues that African American writing emerged as a consequence of slave evangelicalism’s ecstatic worship practices, the frenzied, uncontrollable, and unrehearsed behaviors that are commonly referred to as “shouting.” Persons shout when they are seized by God through the Holy Spirit, and the affective and intellectual qualities slaves acquired while shouting disposed them to take up written discourse and literary culture more broadly as viable enterprises with which to express political dissent and pursue aesthetic fulfillment. This essay establishes shouting’s conceptual formations and contextual features, then reads Richard Allen’s “Spiritual Song” (c. 1800) as well as Jupiter Hammon’s An Address to the Negroes in the State of New-York (1786/7) and “The Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant” (n.d.) as works that exemplify how shouting shaped the figural, ideological, and rhetorical dimensions of early black literary and textual productions.