Space of city in the 19th centuries African American slave narratives

The paper is devoted to the concept and image of city in the 19th cen­tury African American slave narratives by example of the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself. The American forest is imaged as the real danger to the fugitives, the nearly im­passable boundary between the slavery and the freedom, as the mythologi­cal space reminding of the African roots. The slave narratives' authors re­ject the romantic image of forest as a symbol of freedom and contrast it with a space of city elevating hopes of liberation. The text of city (Frederick Douglass's Baltimore text) is an effective means of expression of race, na­tional, and cultural self-consciousness.