Specificity of interpretation and functions of nature in Afro-American slave narratives of the 18-19th centuries

The paper is devoted to the originality of depiction and interpretation of nature in Afro-English and Afro-American slave narratives of the 18-19th centuries. The evolution of the topic, images and functions of nature in the documentary and journalistic works of "the school of heroic fugitives" of the 19th century is traced. Brilliance and abundance of African nature as a symbol of the dear historical Native Land in the eighteenth-century slave narratives were replaced in the nineteenth-century slave narratives by the image, evoking multiple interpretations, of the American forest as a real danger for the fugitive, as an almost impassable barrier between slavery and freedom. The authors of the slave narratives reject the romantic image of the forest as a symbol of freedom, and contrast it with the space of the city arousing hope for freedom.