Slave to the Bottle and the Plough
The Inner and Outer Worlds of Freedom in George Moses Horton’s Poetry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12970513 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Carole Lynn Stewart (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 45-64 |
| Publication date | 2007-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Social History of Alcohol Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0887-2783 • E-ISSN: 2640-7329 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/shad22010045 |
| OpenAlex | W2898482521 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
George Moses Horton was the first enslaved poet to publish a book of poetry in the South. Although stereotypically depicted as a drunkard, he interacted with antebellum temperance discourses and performed poetry and orations at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Whereas temperance reformers and abolitionists often imagined freedom as a private dimension of the self, subject to the resources of the human will and the moral virtues of the protestant work ethic, Horton’s oratorical and poetic rhythms and temperament did not respond to the dominant ethos of reform. Instead, he adapted the republican rhetoric in his environment to develop of performative meaning of temperate freedom. His desire for public distinction and freedom depended upon a public, aesthetic space in which the inner freedom would be realized as part of the outer world. Horton’s writings are expressive of a transcultural situation in which he began to define another mode and time of freedom than those offered in the future-oriented work ethic or in the nostalgic, hierarchical republican traditions of the South
Aesthetics · Art · Chapel · Epistemology · Ethos · Literature · Meaning (existential · Performative utterance · Poetry · Political science · Rhetoric · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
|---|