1st Edition
Frederick Douglass's Curious Audiences Ethos in the Age of the Consumable Subject
By Terry Baxter
Copyright 2004
194 Pages
by
Routledge
196 Pages
by
Routledge
194 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book attempts to answer a fundamental question: How did Douglass manage to persuade anyone about the evils of slavery, and even impress viewers with his personal qualities, when his speeches were commonly considered mere entertainment, in the same category as Barnum's circus acts? In answering this question, Terry Baxter provides a means of understanding the positive responses of Frederick Douglass's white audiences and African American celebrities' roles as both objects of consumption and vehicles for social change.
1. Introduction 2. Reformation and Resentment in Antebellum America 3. Antebellum Rhetorical Culture in Theory, Criticism and Practice 4. The Construction of Blackness and the Constraint of Ethos 5. Douglass as an Exhibit of Ethos Bibliography
Biography
Terry Baxter received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1998.