고려대학교

초록/요약

Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative is considered a proto-type of slave narrative setting an example for the genre and establishing its popular tradition in the-18th-century trans-Atlantic regions including Britain, North America, and the West Indies. Drawing upon Robert Young's notion of “cultural hybridity” and other related literary theories, this study attempts to investigate how Equiano's text re-accentuates and re-formulates the dominant language and culture of the white masters to create a hybridized ‘third' culture for the liberation of his fellow black slaves. In particular, the bi-vocal narrative of the past and the present makes negotiations between the master's language-culture and the ‘mimicry' of the slave ‘trickster.' Despite his separation from his family in his early childhood and the consequent traumatic experience of ‘diaspora,' Equiano managed to preserve his memory of his family, native language and culture to formulate a uniquely bi-cultural identity re-accentuating the dominant forms of the master's language, culture, economic system, technological skills, and religion by hybridizing them intricately with those of Africans. The conclusion indicates that Equiano's text successfully re-appropriates various literary genres of the West such as spiritual autobiography, captivity narrative, adventure story, and picaresque novel, to re-create a unique and interesting narrative for the liberation of his fellow African slaves in the literary and cultural context of the late 18th century.