American Literature
The book is
critical of the treatment of slaves and contains many images by William Blake and Francesco Bartolozzi depicting the cruel treatment of runaway
slaves. It was an example of what became a large body of abolitionist literature. Historians and literary critics find the roots of English nineteenth
century abolitionist literature in the preceding century. Eighteenthcentury Enlightenment ideals such as compassionate humanitarianism and a new
concept of liberty, combined with a growing religious zeal which stressed the perfectibility of mankind and the brotherhood of all races, caused
profound changes in how the English thought and wrote about slavery. A great deal of scholarship has devoted itself to tracing the growth of
antislavery sentiment in English poetry and literature from the eighteenth century, especially in that century's romantic idealization of the "noble
savage
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