Humanities Librarian
Santa Clara University
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053
lgoodwater@scu.edu
Slave Narratives
FINDING INFORMATION ON SLAVE NARRATIVES
The following reference sources contain excellent articles that will give you a good understanding of slave narratives and their significance in American literature.
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African American WritersThis encyclopedia includes an excellent, long article on "The Slave Narrative in American Literature."
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Encyclopedia of African American Writing [ONLINE RESOURCE]This link connects to the article on "Slave Narratives" in this encyclopedia.
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Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Volume 20 [ONLINE RESOURCE]This link connects to the Topic Overview on "American Slave Narratives," which was published in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. To see the contents, click on the link above; then click on the title of the overview, "American Slave Narratives, An Introduction to." Then click on the "Criticism" link to see all the essays reprinted in the overview. Included are journal articles, essays from books, and contemporary 19th-century reviews, which provide historical and social background, introductory overviews, contemporary responses, and more recent critical analysis.
The library has many books that are original slave narratives, as well as books written by scholars about slave narratives. To find them, do a Subject Search in OSCAR, the library catalog, and type the following search terms:
"Slave Narratives"
"Slaves -- Biography"
"Slaves -- United States -- Biography"
"Women slaves -- United States -- Biography"
"Slaves' Writings, American"
"Slavery -- United States -- History -- Sources"
In addition, you can also find more scholarly books about slave narratives as a literary genre by typing the following subject headings:
"Slavery in literature"
"Slave trade in literature"