A Literate South: Reading Before Emancipation

Beth Barton Schweiger

ISBN 10: 030011253X / ISBN 13: 9780300112535

Published by Yale University Press, 2019

About this Item

New tightly bound hardcover in new dust jacket. 8vo. (6.13 x 1 x 9.25 inches) Clean text free of marks or underlining. Includes a list of abbreviations, notes and an index. 288 pp. Fast shipping in a secure book box mailer with tracking. A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South's oral tradition Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy in the American South in the decades just prior to the Civil War by showing that rural people had access to a remarkable variety of things to read. Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible--which has its origins in the eighteenth century--has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture. .

Seller Inventory # 100155

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Literate South: Reading Before Emancipation
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 030011253X
• ISBN 13: 9780300112535
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New
• Dust Jacket Condition: New
• Seller catalogs:
  • African American Studies
  • Education
  • Linguistics : Grammar

About this title

Synopsis

A provocative examination of literacy in the American South before emancipation, countering the long-standing stereotype of the South’s oral tradition

Schweiger complicates our understanding of literacy in the American South in the decades just prior to the Civil War by showing that rural people had access to a remarkable variety of things to read. Drawing on the writings of four young women who lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Schweiger shows how free and enslaved people learned to read, and that they wrote and spoke poems, songs, stories, and religious doctrines that were circulated by speech and in print. The assumption that slavery and reading are incompatible―which has its origins in the eighteenth century―has obscured the rich literate tradition at the heart of Southern and American culture.

About the Author

Beth Barton Schweiger taught for fifteen years at the University of Arkansas. She is the author of The Gospel Working Up and editor of Religion in the American South.