Familial Feeling : Entangled Tonalities in Early Black Atlantic Writing and the Rise of the British Novel

'The key idea of this book is to reevaluate the rise of the British novel from Defoe to Dickens by reading it alongside early Black Atlantic writings from Equiano to Seacole. Elahe Haschemi Yekani profoundly argues that the rise of bourgeois regimes of affect - from 18th century sentimentalism all the way to the heteronormative model of the Victorian family which still haunts us today - was neither a national, nor a white project, but deeply invested and entangled in transatlantic slavery and its aftermath. Compellingly argued, and beautifully written.' - Lars Eckstein, Professor of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, University of Potsdam, Germany. 'Familial Feeling provides a necessary corrective to the narrowly defined canon of great British Literature. Haschemi Yekani makes us rethink the structures that gird British literary epistemologies and opens our eyes to changes long past due. Familial Feeling is not only required reading for everyone who reads in the British literary tradition, it is also a compelling, nuanced inquiry into the construction of knowledge itself.' - Michelle M. Wright, Longstreet Professor of English, Emory University, USA This open access book discusses British literature as part of a network of global entangled modernities and shared aesthetic concerns, departing from the retrospective model of a postcolonial "writing back" to the centre. Accordingly, the narrative strategies in the texts of early Black Atlantic authors, like Equiano, Sancho, Wedderburn, and Seacole, and British canonical novelists, such as Defoe, Sterne, Austen, and Dickens, are framed as entangled tonalities. Via their engagement with discourses on slavery, abolition, and imperialism, these texts shaped an understanding of national belonging as a form of familial feeling. This study thus complicates the "rise of the novel" framework and British middle-class identity formation from a transnational perspective combining approaches in narrative studies with postcolonial and queer theory Acknowledgements 6 Contents 8 List of Figures 9 Chapter 1: Introduction: Provincialising the Rise of the British Novel in the Transatlantic Public Sphere 10 Familial Feeling 16 The Rise of the Novel Reconsidered (Again) 34 Entangled Tonalities 40 Works Cited 65 Part I: 1719–1807: Moral Sentiment and the Abolition of the Slave Trade 76 Chapter 2: Foundations: Defoe and Equiano 77 Insular Masculinity: Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe 79 Oceanic Britishness: Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative 96 Works Cited 124 Chapter 3: Digressions: Sancho and Sterne 130 Dashing Familiarity: Ignatius Sancho’s Letters 133 Eluding Solidarity: Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey 149 Works Cited 173 Part II: 1807–1857: Social Reform and the Rise of the New Imperialism 178 Chapter 4: Resistances: Austen and Wedderburn 179 The Will to Feel: Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park 181 Wilful Familiarity: Robert Wedderburn’s The Horrors of Slavery 200 Works Cited 222 Chapter 5: Consolidations: Dickens and Seacole 228 Fa(r)ther from Home: Charles Dickens’s American Notes and Bleak House 231 (M)Other of the Nation: Mary Seacole’s Wonderful Adventures 245 Works Cited 272 Chapter 6: Conclusion: Queer Modes of Empathy as an Ethics of the Archive 277 Memory and Affect 278 Ethics of the Archive 281 Queering Modes of Empathy 289 Works Cited 293 Index 296 Front Matter ....Pages i-xi Introduction: Provincialising the Rise of the British Novel in the Transatlantic Public Sphere (Elahe Haschemi Yekani)....Pages 1-66 Front Matter ....Pages 67-67 Foundations: Defoe and Equiano (Elahe Haschemi Yekani)....Pages 69-121 Digressions: Sancho and Sterne (Elahe Haschemi Yekani)....Pages 123-170 Front Matter ....Pages 171-171 Resistances: Austen and Wedderburn (Elahe Haschemi Yekani)....Pages 173-221 Consolidations: Dickens and Seacole (Elahe Haschemi Yekani)....Pages 223-271 Conclusion: Queer Modes of Empathy as an Ethics of the Archive (Elahe Haschemi Yekani)....Pages 273-291 Back Matter ....Pages 293-298