The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)

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The Confessions of Nat Turner (1st edition)
Author	William Styron
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	1967
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	480
ISBN	ISBN 0-679-60101-5 (1st ed)
Preceded by	Set This House on Fire
Followed by	Sophie's Choice

The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by U.S. writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by Nat Turner, the novel is a fictionalized account of the historical event of a slave revolt in Virginia in 1831.

1 Plot introduction
2 Literary significance & criticism
3 Criticism
4 External links
5 Footnotes

[edit] Plot introduction

The novel is based on an extant document, the "confession" of Turner to the white lawyer Thomas Gray. In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been divinely inspired, charged with a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and destroy the white race.

Styron's ambitious novel attempts to recreate the character of Nat Turner from Gray's account and does not purport to describe accurately or authoritatively the events as they occurred. Indeed, most historians consider Gray's "confessions" to be largely fictitious. Styron takes further liberties with the historical Nat Turner, such as removing his wife from the story. The "Confessions" is largely sympathetic to Turner, if not to his thoughts.

[edit] Literary significance & criticism

Despite defenses by notable African-American authors Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin, the novel was strongly criticised by some black Americans for its treatment of Turner as a brooding and sexually disturbed figure.^{[citation needed]} Turner and one of his supporters are shown fantasizing about sexually assaulting white women. The "myth of the black rapist", painting black men as prone to sexual violence (particularly against white women), represented a longstanding racist stereotype that was sometimes used as an excuse for lynching black men.^{[citation needed]} Consequently, this aspect of the book was understandably controversial.

Despite these criticisms, Styron's novel won critical acclaim; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968. Perhaps its greatest accomplishment is its portrayal of the ways in which slavery corrupted and twisted ideals such as Christianity and innocence.

[edit] Criticism

Clarke, John Henrik, ed. William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Boston: Beacon P, 1968.

Genovese, Eugene D. "The Nat Turner Case." The New York Times 12 Sept. 1968. 20 Apr. 2008 <www.nybooks.com/articles/11572>.

Mellard, James M. “This Unquiet Dust: The Problem of History in Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner.” Mississippi Quarterly 36.4 (Fall 1983): 525-43.

Ryan, Tim A. “From Tara to Turner: Slavery and Slave Psychologies in American Fiction and History, 1945-1968.” Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 2008: 63-113.