Intertextuality

As the preeminent black orator and author of the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass filled his speeches and writings with intertextual references, from the Western classical tradition to the Bible to contemporaneous British and American writers. In his various roles as antislavery activist, writer, editor, and publisher, Douglass employed intertexts as tools of rhetorical suasion and authority.As his fame grew, so too did the complexity and range of literary references. This essay looks at intertexts in Douglass’s speeches, his 1845 Narrative, and his 1853 novella, The Heroic Slave.