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English Language and Literature Commons

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Literary history

Santa Clara University

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Anne Hutchinson And The Economics Of Antinomian Selfhood In Colonial New England, Michelle Burnham Jan 1997

Anne Hutchinson And The Economics Of Antinomian Selfhood In Colonial New England, Michelle Burnham

English

If American literary histories so often begin with the New England Puritans, it is because histories with such a starting point are able to tell an appealing national story of coherent community and religious freedom. So, at any rate, suggests T. H. Breen when he notes that beginning the national narrative instead with John Smith and the Virginia colony would require telling a far less pleasing tale of American greed, domination, and exploitation. Philip Gura has likewise wondered how Sacvan Bercovitch's model of an "American self," formulated from exclusively Puritan New England materials, might be complicated by John Smith's mercantilism. …


Loopholes Of Resistance: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative And The Critique Of Agency In Foucault, Michelle Burnham Jan 1993

Loopholes Of Resistance: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative And The Critique Of Agency In Foucault, Michelle Burnham

English

Located in the exact center of Harriet Jacobs' i86r slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Shve Girl, is a chapter entitled "The Loophole of Retreat. " The chapter's title refers to the tiny crawlspace above her grandmother's shed, where Jacobs hides for seven years in an effort to escape her master's persecution and the "peculiar institution" of slavery which authorizes that persecution. This chapter's central location, whether the result of accident or design, would seem to suggest its structural significance within Jacobs' narrative. Yet its central location is by no means obvious, for "The Loophole of Retreat" goes …