The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1968 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by American writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by historical figure Nat Turner, the novel concerns Nat Turner's Rebellion in Virginia in 1831. It is a fictional retelling based on The Confessions of Nat Turner: The Leader of the Late Insurrection in Southampton, Virginia, a first-hand account of Turner's confessions published by a local lawyer, Thomas R. Gray, in 1831.[1]
 First edition cover | |
| Author | William Styron |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | 1967 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 0-679-60101-5 (1st ed) |
| OCLC | 30069097 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3569.T9 C6 1994 |
Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[2]
Historical background
editThe novel is based on an extant document, the "confession" of Turner to his white lawyer Thomas R. Gray.[1] In the historical confessions, Turner claims to have been divinely inspired.
Some scholars believe that mental illness may have driven Nat Turner's actions,[3] while others believed Turner to have been moved by religiosity.[4]
References
edit- ^ a b Gray, Thomas Ruffin (1831). "The Confessions of Nat Turner" (PDF).
- ^ "100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005", Time Magazine, accessed 17 April 2009
- ^ Higginson, Thomas Wentworth (2011-11-07). "Nat Turner's Insurrection". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2021-12-03.
- ^ Drexler-Dreis, Joseph (2014-11-01). "Nat Turner's Rebellion as a Process of Conversion". Black Theology. 12 (3): 230–250. doi:10.1179/1476994814Z.00000000037. ISSN 1476-9948. S2CID 142767518.
Further reading
edit- Clarke, John Henrik, ed. William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
- Genovese, Eugene D. "The Nat Turner Case", review of William Styron's Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond, The New York Review of Books, 11.4 (September 12, 1968).
- Mellard, James M. "This Unquiet Dust: The Problem of History in Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner", Mississippi Quarterly, 36.4 (Fall 1983), pp. 525–43.
- Ryan, Tim A. "From Tara to Turner: Slavery and Slave Psychologies in American Fiction and History, 1945–1968", Calls and Responses: The American Novel of Slavery since Gone with the Wind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008.