publication

This article considers the historical and literary contexts in which Martin R. Delany's novel Blake (1859) was published and evoke the tradition of black avenger narratives with which Delany engaged. With Blake, Delany set out to break the paralyzing status of the Haitian Revolution as the absolute referent of black revolt and autonomy. He looked for balance in referencing the unavoidable black avenger literary tradition, the related canonical representations of Haiti, channeling transnational notions of blackness intimately linked to Haitian history and offering a new, U.S.-specific model. By writing over Haiti in Blake, Delany defined his novel as a cultural intervention, a renewed literary model for a new black American nation.