From its opening account of his birth to its closing pages depicting his new-found freedom, Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself is characterized in part by its strikingly fluid, refined, and effective prose style.
Despite his masterful control of language a paradoxical problem seems to subtly haunt Douglass's Narrative: the text's memorable prose is perhaps ironically too good.
As an ex-slave autobiographer, Douglass was traveling a road already well-worn by the accepted conventions of his day for both autobiographies and slave narratives.
The slave narrative was a means to freedom, but it also represented a tactical confinement and imposed what might be called a genre slavery …show more content…
Consistent with the potential of this comic literary device to play a serious role in a text, Douglass uses humorous irony in many places throughout his Narrative.
What the Narrative does is construct layer upon layer of irony: it begins by frequently signaling on the sentence level that many of its statements are meant to be taken ironically; continues by erecting larger structures of irony that undermine several textual passages which seem to depict certain aspects of slavery in a positive light; and finally enshrouds the text in an enveloping cloud of irony by adding an appendix that establishes after-the-fact Douglass's ironical attitude towards the religion that underwrites the ideology of slavery.
The most visible place where irony manifests itself in Douglass's Narrative is on the basic sentence …show more content…
Auld was good and remained good up until the time he wrote his narrative; the text implies this is the case by fusing Douglass's first impression of her with other impressions that would have taken a substantial amount of time for him to develop.
The intended rhetorical effect of this narrative strategy is to remind us that things are not as they seem at first; that what words appear to say is often not what they ultimately signify.
The next large-scale type of irony that occasionally appears in the Narrative could similarly be called a "Textual" irony in that it has to do with the general prose style of the work.
For all its power and sincerity, an intriguing occurrence which haunts the Narrative at several strange instances is the manner in which its prose style is-for all its effectiveness-at jarring and ironic odds with its subject matter.
The careful, measured progression of the Narrative's language, in other words, at times contrasts sharply with the cruel and painful events it describes; its "Deceptive richness of language, style, and structure" occasionally masks the horror of slavery it depicts.
Two particular instances demonstrate this somewhat awkward fit in the Narrative between an event and its
Despite his masterful control of language a paradoxical problem seems to subtly haunt Douglass's Narrative: the text's memorable prose is perhaps ironically too good.
As an ex-slave autobiographer, Douglass was traveling a road already well-worn by the accepted conventions of his day for both autobiographies and slave narratives.
The slave narrative was a means to freedom, but it also represented a tactical confinement and imposed what might be called a genre slavery …show more content…
Consistent with the potential of this comic literary device to play a serious role in a text, Douglass uses humorous irony in many places throughout his Narrative.
What the Narrative does is construct layer upon layer of irony: it begins by frequently signaling on the sentence level that many of its statements are meant to be taken ironically; continues by erecting larger structures of irony that undermine several textual passages which seem to depict certain aspects of slavery in a positive light; and finally enshrouds the text in an enveloping cloud of irony by adding an appendix that establishes after-the-fact Douglass's ironical attitude towards the religion that underwrites the ideology of slavery.
The most visible place where irony manifests itself in Douglass's Narrative is on the basic sentence …show more content…
Auld was good and remained good up until the time he wrote his narrative; the text implies this is the case by fusing Douglass's first impression of her with other impressions that would have taken a substantial amount of time for him to develop.
The intended rhetorical effect of this narrative strategy is to remind us that things are not as they seem at first; that what words appear to say is often not what they ultimately signify.
The next large-scale type of irony that occasionally appears in the Narrative could similarly be called a "Textual" irony in that it has to do with the general prose style of the work.
For all its power and sincerity, an intriguing occurrence which haunts the Narrative at several strange instances is the manner in which its prose style is-for all its effectiveness-at jarring and ironic odds with its subject matter.
The careful, measured progression of the Narrative's language, in other words, at times contrasts sharply with the cruel and painful events it describes; its "Deceptive richness of language, style, and structure" occasionally masks the horror of slavery it depicts.
Two particular instances demonstrate this somewhat awkward fit in the Narrative between an event and its