Interpreting Slave Narratives

Résumé du livre

Hundreds of stories were written by Africans who survived slavery in the United States. These slave narratives have been examined through many different lenses. There have been political, social, historical, literature analysis of these texts. Slave narratives supported the Abolition movement, and many narrators became sought after speakers on the abolition circuit. This study analyzed three slave narratives written during the antebellum period of the United States. The purpose was to investigate the presence of creative thinking and behavior in the authors. The study was grounded in the work of accepted definitions and theories of creativity scholars. The framework of the study was based on Mel Rhodes' theory of the four P's (1961), which organizes creativity as creative personality, creative process, creative product, and creative press or environment. The narratives, as historical primary sources were investigated by identifying and interpreting specific recorded behaviors of the authors as meeting the criteria noted by creativity scholars. Creative personality was measured by the work of J.P. (Guilford, 1950) and (Csikzentmyhalyi, 1996). Creative process was identified by applying the creativity formula of (Noller, 2001). Creative press, in this case, was life in the institution of slavery, and creative product was life in freedom. Based on these theories, the findings indicated creativity was present in the planning, execution, and successful escapes from enslavement to freedom of the authors of the narratives.