Slavery, empathy, and pornography

Abstract

Slavery empathy and pornography takes a shocking new look at the literatures and arts generated buy the slavery debates in England 1780-1865. Wood asserts that slavery not only was but remains, a dilemma for evreyone in Brtain. The book is interdisciplinary, incorporating materials ranging from cononical literatures to the lowest forms of street publication. The central chapters cross examine the slvery writings of William Cobbett, John Thelwall, John Stedman, Harriet Martineau, John Ruskin and Thomas Carlyle. Many new perspectives are used to open up the older texts, for example Caryl Phillips's 'Crossing the River' is read against the slavery writings of John Newton, and William Blake's work is read through the imagery of Robert Mapplethorpe.