Slavery through a Rhetorical Lens: The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill as the Female Neo-slave Narrative

Abstract

The paper uses the rhetorical lenses to examine a neo-slave narrative The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. The exploration of emotive, ethical, and political dimensions of the text allows the author to demonstrate its emotional and moral effects, deriving within the triad author-text-reader. The article particularly highlights gendered aspects of bondage, which have been traditionally marginalized. The female protagonist and the message that her story conveys prompt the readers to assume a position on the subject of slavery which transcends the story as such and condemns the legal institution of human chattel enslavement in all its representation.

Keywords

• neo-slave narrative
• female slaves
• abolitionism