SOURCE: Franklin, H. Bruce. “Animal Farm Unbound Or, What the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Reveals about American Literature.” New Letters 43, no. 3 (spring 1977): 25-46.

In the following essay, Franklin explores animal imagery in the Narrative and the role of Douglass's story in refuting the commonly held belief, particularly in the South, that slaves were incapable of producing literature.

Prior to the Black urban rebellions of 1964-1968, what the academic establishment defined as American literature included about as many Afro-American achievements as major-league baseball did before 1947. The subsequent token integration of our anthologies, curricula, and departments has not fundamentally altered the canon of American literary masterpieces, nor the criteria for choosing that canon and the critical methodologies applied to it. By and large, we are still acting as though American literature were a mere colonial implantation, no doubt modified by local conditions but in...