From the earliest critical discussion of the slave narrative genre in Rev. Ephraim Peabody's review essay of 1849 through the most recent scholarly analyses, unexamined assumptions have been advanced about the conventions, including structure, language, theme, and plot, which determine the inclusion of those slave narratives identified as generic texts. The 1988 publication of the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, under the editorship of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., includes several formerly unavailable slave narratives which constitute a new subgenre I am here defining for the first time as "mulatta texts." Mulatta texts expose, in their structuring between unequal voices, the negotiations necessary in slavery, an institution defined as the "paradox of formal distance and physical intimacy" by historian C. Vann Woodward. I analyze the textual control and moral agenda that the named author, northern abolitionist Rev. Hiram Mattison, maintained over one exemplary mulatta text in the Schomburg Library, Louisa Picquet, the Octoroon, but I also attend carefully to the complex and "muted voice" (to borrow John Sekora's term) of Louisa Picquet as she advances very different purposes. Determined to gain the financial contributions necessary to purchase the freedom of her mother and brother, Picquet cooperates with her interrogator even as she resists his familiar gaze and asserts her identity as a black woman in her own community. Although the last half of the text seems to erase Picquet, careful analyses of Louisa Picquet and other mulatta texts supports Toni Morrison's project, as limned in Playing in the Dark, to re-examine the entire canon of American literature for the presences of "Africanisms." Expanded understandings of the complexities of voice in mulatta narratives will allow us to respond to the voices of former slaves in other mulatta texts, narratives neither written nor controlled by the African Americans but nonetheless shaped by their powers of articulation and resistance.
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机译：从最早对Ephraim Peabody牧师1849年的评论文章中关于奴隶叙事类型的批判性讨论到最新的学术分析，对于这些约定，包括结构，语言，主题和情节，都提出了未经审查的假设，这些约定决定了是否包括那些被标识为普通文本的奴隶叙述。 1988年，在小亨利·路易斯·盖茨（Henry Louis Gates，Jr.）的带领下出版的十九世纪黑人女性作家萧邦图书馆，其中包括几个以前不存在的奴隶叙事，这些叙事构成了一个新的子类别，我在这里首次将其定义为“穆拉塔文本”。 ”穆拉塔（Mulatta）的文字在不平等声音之间的结构中揭示了奴隶制所必需的谈判，奴隶制被历史学家C. Vann Woodward定义为“正式距离与身体亲密性的悖论”。我分析了命名作者北方废奴主义者牧师希拉姆·马蒂森（Hiram Mattison）保留的文本控制和道德议程，他们在八角城的路易斯堡·皮奎特（Louisa Picquet）的朔姆堡图书馆中保留了一项示范性的穆拉塔文字，但我也认真参加了复杂而又“柔和的声音” （借用约翰·塞科拉（John Sekora）的话）路易莎·皮奎特（Louisa Picquet）提出了截然不同的目标。 Picquet决心获得购买母亲和兄弟自由所需的财政捐款，即使她抵制熟悉的凝视并在自己的社区中坚持自己是黑人妇女的身份，Picquet还是与审讯者合作。尽管文本的后半部分似乎抹去了Picquet，但对Louisa Picquet和其他穆拉塔语文本的仔细分析支持了Toni Morrison的项目（如《在黑暗中玩耍》中所限制的那样），以重新审视美国文学的全部教义中是否存在“非洲主义”。 。”对mulatta叙事中声音复杂性的进一步理解将使我们能够对其他mulatta文本中的前奴隶的声音做出回应，这些叙事既非裔美国人也未编写或控制，但仍受其表达能力和抵抗力的影响。
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