Abolitionism

The paper considers the bipolar racial model representing African Americans in tragic and / or comic modality in American literature and culture (18th – the beginning of the 20th century). This model was formed in the 18th – beginning 19th century, continued to exist in American abolitionist writings, minstrelsy and plantation novel during the 19th century; having been absorbed by the Black American literary tradition, it underwent a considerable change especially in the Harlem Renaissance period.

John Woolman, an 18th century Quaker preacher, is known in the history of American literature for his spiritual autobiography titled The Journal (1774). The 1850–1940s is a period when Woolman’s autobiographical character attracts the attention of British and American critics and essay writers. They publish a signifi cant number of non-fi ction texts, which contain numerous elements of hagiography in Woolman’s portraiture, depicting him as a saintly proto-abolitionist fi gure.