E-Thesis 114 views
Taking Liberty / SARAH TANBURN
Swansea University Author: SARAH TANBURN
Abstract
The novel Taking Liberty tells the story of William Brown. Born in 1789 in St Lucia, the daughter of Black revolutionaries, she becomes a British prisoner of war. Enamoured of the sea, she joins the Royal Navy, becoming a sailor, a spy, a lover and a visionary seeker after liberty. The novel suggest...
| Published: |
Swansea, Wales, UK
2024
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| Institution: | Swansea University |
| Degree level: | Doctoral |
| Degree name: | Ph.D |
| Supervisor: | Farebrother, Rachel ; Gower, Jon |
| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68100 |
| Abstract: |
The novel Taking Liberty tells the story of William Brown. Born in 1789 in St Lucia, the daughter of Black revolutionaries, she becomes a British prisoner of war. Enamoured of the sea, she joins the Royal Navy, becoming a sailor, a spy, a lover and a visionary seeker after liberty. The novel suggests a new approach to understanding the opportunities offered by freeing its central character from defining herself in opposition to men while remaining firmly rooted in the realities of her own body, her geography and her era.The bulk of the second half of the novel to its completion is submitted for examination, with a synopsis of the first section.The accompanying essay, entitled You Are Not Alone: Navigating the Seas of Liberty, asks what heroism means for William. I explore William’s attributes as a revolutionary, a mariner, a person of visibly African descent and a woman to investigate the multiple concepts of heroism such a figure evokes. I conclude that William is a cultural creolisation of those heroic tropes, a new figure, who is a seafaring, committed and widely connected free Black woman. |
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| Item Description: |
Due to Embargo and/or Third Party Copyright restrictions, this thesis is not available via this service. |
| Keywords: |
fiction, maritime, historical, revolution, Guadeloupe, Haiti, slavery, abolition, Napoleon, Delgrès, woman, Black, lesbian, Wales, Royal Navy, Nelson, Waterloo, Trafalgar |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |