Slave Narratives as part of the American Literary Canon; 12 Years a Slave From the Book to the Movie

Abstract

This research work will deal with four main points; slavery, slave narratives, Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave and Steve McQueen’s film version. Slavery in America was an issue of debate and still is. There is no fixed date that tells the beginning of slavery in America, but it surely began by the 17th century in the American colonies. Slaves developed their own traditions, culture and literature, and gave birth to a new genre that is Slave Narratives. The story under focus is that of Solomon Northup entitled12 Years a Slave; the story of a free black man from New York, tricked by two men who kidnapped him into slavery for 12 years. This story inspired the British filmmaker Steve McQueen to adapt it into a movie, and was able to do it with the help of his screen writer John Ridley; they turned the memoir into a worldwide famous movie thanks to its faithfulness to the original written form. This work is divided into two chapters a theoretical part, where we will tackle the issue of slavery in America, slave narratives, movie adaptations, and a second chapter which is more practical where we will introduce Solomon Northup’s memoir and the movie based on it, then moving to similarities and deference’s between them and concluding with issue of faithfulness to the original script.