Date:  Tue, 1 Apr 1997 10:06:49 -0500
<br>From:  Elizabeth Gibbens  gibbens[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]NYTIMES.COM 
<br>Subject: Re: Query
<br>
<br>Dear Professor Salmons:
<br>
<br>    I don't have a direct answer for you, but Claudia Tate in the George
<br>Washington University English Department is a good person to ask. She is a
<br>scholar of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African-American
<br>literature and serves on the editorial board of _The Journal of American
<br>Literature_. The telephone number of the GW English Dept. is (202) 994-6180.
<br>
<br>                    Elizabeth Gibbens
<br>
<br>At 06:32 AM 4/1/97 -0500, you wrote:
<br> A grad student in our department (Cordelia Scharpf) is starting to work on
<br> some fiction written here and abroad in German by Mathilde Franziska Anneke,
<br> an abolitionist and early feminist leader. Much of the work deals with
<br> slavery. Anneke's representation of African-American speech owes much to
<br> English literary works of the time, but contains other elements as well.
<br> Some of these are Anglicisms, some stereotypical foreign talk and so on.
<br> 
<br> Can anybody recommend good recent work on the representation of African-
<br> American speech in 19th c. literature? Has anything at all been done on
<br> this topic using literature in languages other than English?
<br> 
<br> Thanks,
<br> joe salmons
<br> jsalmons[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]facstaff.wisc.edu 
<br> 
<br> 
<br>Elizabeth Gibbens
<br>Research Assistant
<br>Mr. William Safire, The New York Times
<br>
<br>-----------------------------
<br>
<br>Date:  Tue, 1 Apr 1997 09:34:39 -0600
<br>From:  "Timothy C. Frazer"  mftcf[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UXA.ECN.BGU.EDU 
<br>Subject: Re: Query
<br>
<br>On Tue, 1 Apr 1997, Joseph C. Salmons wrote:
<br>
<br>A grad student in our department (Cordelia Scharpf) is starting to work on
<br>  some fiction written here and abroad in German by Mathilde Franziska Anneke,
<br>  an abolitionist and early feminist leader. Much of the work deals with
<br>  slavery. Anneke's representation of African-American speech owes much to
<br>  English literary works of the time, but contains other elements as well.
<br>  Some of these are Anglicisms, some stereotypical foreign talk and so on.
<br> 
<br>  Can anybody recommend good recent work on the representation of African-
<br>  American speech in 19th c. literature? Has anything at all been done on
<br>  this topic using literature in languages other than English?
<br>
<br>1. In a recent biography of Sojourner Truth (Princeton UP), it states that
<br>many of her speech were reproduced in the press in a "mock southern"
<br>dialect, even though she spent her life in New York state and spoke Dutch
<br>as a first language. This suggests that there was a stereotype tradtion
<br>for representing VBE in lit.
<br>
<br>2. There might be something in the history of minstrelsy. A book called
<br>"Blacking Up" has been recommended to me but I haven't gotten around to
<br>reading it yet.
<br>