Slavery and Oratory: Frederick Douglass in the History of Rhetoric

The antislavery and antiracist oratory of Frederick Douglass is a powerful case study the appropriation transformation “the master’s tools.” Douglass’s formative exposure to classical rhetorical tradition well known—but just as important are ways in which he subverted it. He did so by developing categorically new, hybrid role: orator-slave. Slavery played an part conceptual apparatus Ciceronian rhetoric that absorbed: it conceived willing, temporary submission harms were commonly associated with slavery. An explanation force should begin his translation orator-slave identification from metaphorical literal plane. Drawing on self-education discipline artifice, account symbolic uses slavery rhetoric, own oratory, I reconstruct claim embody uniquely vivid way.