Speakers: Dee E. Andrews, California State University; Christopher Parmenter, Ohio State University
This meeting of the Penn’s Workshop in the History of Material Texts will be held on Monday October 6th at 5:15 in the Van Pelt – Dietrich Library, the Sixth Floor, Class of 1978 Pavilion.
Abstract:
“We will be discussing two elements of our forthcoming book, Thomas Clarkson’s Latin Essay: Radical Antislavery, Classical Reception, and Abolitionist Print in the Age of Revolution. Based on the first translation of Clarkson’s “An Liceat Invitos in Servitutem Dare” since 1786, our work explores in depth the composition, publication, distribution, response, and reprinting, not least of all in Revolutionary France, of a key text in the first abolition movement.
Charles Parmenter will introduce the subject of the Latin Essay itself, the significance of its translation, and how Clarkson reverses the formerly conventional argument regarding slavery in the classical tradition. Dee Andrews will then provide examples of unusual reader response to An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1786) — the Latin Essay (greatly expanded) in print — and the essay’s endurance as an abolitionist symbol.”