Cat Champney

Cat Champney (she/her) is currently an English literature PhD student at the University of Delaware. She studies adaptation(s) of nineteenth-century gothic narratives, with an emphasis on the Radcliffean tradition and texts formerly categorized as “female” gothics. Broadly, Cat’s research considers intersections of adaptation, gender, and genre, as well as the representation of domestic themes and spaces. She is also interested in the ways in which contemporary adaptations of the nineteenth century speak to current topics in feminism, sparked by events like the #MeTooMovement and the overturning of Roe V. Wade. Before attending UD, Cat obtained her MA in Literature from Brooklyn College with a specialty in nineteenth-century fiction. Her MA Thesis considers the representation (and lack thereof) of motherhood in David Selznick’s film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. For more information, please visit:https://sites.google.com/udel.edu/catchampneyphd/

Plagiarism; or, Adaptation?
A Renegotiation of the Reputation of William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown’s Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter—widely considered the first African American novel—fictionalizes the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, though this is only one of many recognizable historical narratives within his complex demonstration of vast intertextuality. And, Brown’s complex use of intertextuality continues to baffle scholars and readers alike, as they struggle to find “unity” in the text.^[1] Brown’s novel follows the life of Clotel, the titular character, and her relatives: Althesa (her sister), Mary (her daughter), Jane and Ellen (her nieces), as well as various companions met along the way. Through each narrative line, Brown mixes historical rumors (like that of Hemings and Jefferson), historical facts (diseases and legal trials), and literary texts by Romantic authors and abolitionists. Though more nuanced readings of Brown’s work suggest high levels of intellectualism and innovation, Brown’s reputation rarely includes praises—instead, Clotel has been more frequently derided as an aesthetic failure.^[2] Robert Reid-Pharr even (quite dramatically) claims: “the first Black American novelist must be… the worst Black American novelist.”^[3] Complementary to aesthetic defilements, Brown’s text is read and understood—even by his supporters—as a product of plagiarism. “Over the course of [his] career,” Geoffrey Sanborn writes, “Brown plagiarized at least 87,000 words from at least 282 texts. He did not merely borrow ideas or creatively metabolize a major source text or two; he copied, for the most part, word for word.”^[4] Clotel, specifically, hosts 102 plagiarized passages from 55 sources (almost 23 percent of the novel).^[5] Though Sanborn confronts the term “plagiarism” in the boldest manner, other scholars use alternate, but similar terms to relay the same, perhaps unintentional, message: Brown did not really write Clotel, or his texts.

However, Clotel is not a product of plagiarism as it is broadly defined in contemporary culture. And Plagiarism—readers, writers, and students can safely agree—is not a neutral term. Therefore, Clotel should not be understood as a product of plagiarism, but instead as a product of specific reprinting and revision: a product I call revisionist adaptation. Revisionist adaptation and, broadly, the lens of adaptation produces critical readings of Brown’s intertextuality (his “plagiarism”) as an integral component of his writing. Additionally, reading through the lens of adaptation encourages reading Clotel alongside its sources, without hierarchal binaries (an allegiance to a “source” text) and overreliance on originality. Afterall, as Lisette Lopez Szwydky argues, “’original’ works are often adaptations themselves.”^[6] Therefore, a clearer understanding of Brown’s practices as adaptation, I argue, correlates directly to stronger analyses, with powerful terminology that speaks the language of Brown’s complex text.

Unfortunately, Adaptation Studies (the field) thus far has been somewhat ignorant of early African American literature and writing. Historically, Adaptation Studies centered film adaptations as the primary mode of adaptation, so Black and African American writers were only the subject of adaptation case studies if and when Hollywood adapted their text to film. And, perhaps evident from the viral hashtag, #OscarsSoWhite,^[7] Black creators still receive far less critical attention than their White colleagues—a trend that exists in Hollywood, Universities, and various academic fields. Although existing adaptation models focus on film, television, and stage performances, new methods and theories in the field suggest examining a broader range of adaptations. And adaptation models, according to Szwydky, can be readily “reworked for new forms and media.”^[8] All things considered, adaptation theories—limited as they may be—provide ample foreground to re-examine Clotel and Brown’s writing practices from a new angle.

In the following sections, I will take a transhistorical approach to reading Clotel, in the sense that I will apply adaptation theories and models to Brown’s writing, as I use Brown’s text to explore contemporary adaptation reading practices. In defense of her own adaptation-driven transhistoricism, Szwydky writes, “my goal is to flip the interpretive script that designates adaptation as an afterthought or as a derivative object that primarily exists through its relationship to an ‘original’ source… too many times adaptation is metaphorically used to describe the ‘afterlife’ of texts”^[9] Like Szwydky, I intend to treat Brown’s adaptation not as an afterthought, but as a frontrunner in the literary production culture of his time. In the following sections, I first read Clotel through the lens of adaptation and define revisionist adaptation. Then, I explore Brown’s reception and reputation as a plagiarist, followed by a concluding section on adaptation theories that speak directly to Clotel and Brown’s writing practices.

Part I: William Wells Brown’s Adaptation of Lydia Marie Child’s “The Quadroons”

Though Clotel was popularized by the retelling of the rumored Hemings and Jefferson relationship, Brown’s revisionist adaptation of Lydia Marie Child’s “The Quadroons” is arguably the most sustained intertextual engagements in the narrative. Robert Stam defines revisionist adaptations as adaptations that “dramatically transform and revitalize their source texts through provocative changes in locale, epoch, casting, genre, perspective, performance modes, or production processes.”^[10] Immediately, Brown dramatically transforms Child’s narrative through a provocative change in perspective, as he recasts Child’s characters as descendants of Thomas Jefferson—the American founding “father.” Additionally, Brown changes the ending of Child’s narrative and engages further with sentimental tropes. In fact, his overall use of the sentimental genre—more emphatic and provocative than Child’s—highlights Brown’s skill as a writer and heavy engagement with other sentimental authors, which displaces the notion that he only plagiarized Child’s story. Instead, he revises her story through dramatic and provocative changes that seek to challenge similar patriarchal ideologies, through a more direct attack on the concept of a unified, universal “founding father.” Additionally, Brown’s use of adaptation to alter Child’s story separates his central messaging from hers. Brown encourages his adapted characters to—like their form—adapt to their circumstances and “read” situations differently, resulting in different narrative outcomes.

In the Bedford Edition of Clotel, “The Quadroons” is included in an Appendix, so the two texts can be read together. In the introduction to this edition, Levine writes: “Though Brown changed the names and the settings of Child’s story, he lifted large swatches of text verbatim for his novel.”^[11] In this sentence, the emphasis is given to the large, verbatim “swatches,” when the changed names and settings make far more of an impact in Brown’s rewriting of Child’s text. And, as I note, the endings of the two narratives are significantly different. Furthermore, Levine writes that Brown “broke the story into three different sections and, through his use of pastiche and bricolage, put Child’s sentimental discourse, plotting, and motifs into dialogue with discourses, plotting, and motifs that granted greater agency to rebellious blacks.”^[12] This is a somewhat challenging statement, as it is true but asserts an unfair hierarchy between Child and Brown. Brown certainly puts Child’s text into other contexts, but he also engages with the sentimental tradition as a whole—which does not begin or end with Child’s specific discourse. And, though Brown does use skilled pastiche and bricolage with Child’s work, he often assumes the pastiche of other Romantic writers as well—it is difficult, if not impossible, to assign ownership to any particular discourse in Brown’s writing. However, in swatches attributed to Child’s text, Brown often enhances them with enhanced sentimentality—he does not just copy them. For instance, while Child describes a setting as a “princely mansion,” Brown writes;

This was a most singular spot, remote, in a dense forest spreading over the summit of a cliff that rose abruptly to a great height above the sea; but so grand in its situation, in the desolate sublimity which reigned around, in the reverential murmur of the waves that washed its base, that, though picturesque, it was a forest prison.^[13]

Such enhancements move beyond a mere transcription of Child and reveal Brown’s ability to write fluently in the Romantic tradition and resemble many (or all) skilled Romantics. Geoffrey Sanborn’s quantitative analysis of Brown’s intertextuality supports this, as Brown adapts the likes of: Alexander Pope, Lord Byron, Washington Irving, and Samuel Richardson.^[14] This is not to say that Child has no presence in Brown’s style (she obviously does), but simply to demonstrate how Levine’s description plays into broader ideas about adaptation, ownership, and originality that place Child’s narrative figuratively above Brown’s in a literary, cultural hierarchy.

While I will return to hierarchy in subsequent sections, reading “The Quadroons” alongside Clotel demonstrates Brown’s skill as an adaptor and his interest beyond bricolage, as he expands and revises Child’s narrative. “The Quadroons” is relatively shorter than Clotel and tells the story of Rosalie (a mixed race women), Edward (her white “husband”) and Xarifa (their daughter). Rosalie and Edward are married, but the marriage is only “sanctioned by Heaven,” as they cannot legally marry due to Rosalie’s race. Due to her own experiences as a mixed race woman, Rosalie finds herself devastated by Xarifa’s future: “When she looked at her beloved Xarifa, and reflected upon the unavoidable and dangerous position which the tyranny of society had awarded her, her soul was filled with anguish… in the deep tenderness of the mother’s eye there was an in-dwelling sadness, that spoke of anxious thoughts and fearful forebodings.”^[15] In a tragic manner, Edward, overcome by political ambition, leaves Rosalie and Xarifa for Charlotte, a white woman and a potential legal wife. Ultimately, Child’s narrative is a tragedy. The demise of Rosalie and Edward’s relationship leads to both of their deaths and to the sale of Xarifa, to a man “probably about forty years of age, with handsome features, but a fierce and proud expression.”^[16] In the end of the narrative, this man kills Xarifa’s lover, rapes Xarifa, and causes her to die a “raving maniac.”^[17] Ultimately, Child’s story demonstrates the inaccessibility of cultural ideologies pertaining to womanhood, such as purity, love, and sentimentality. Though Xarifa and Rosalie deeply respect the cultural institution of marriage, their race precludes them from participation and instead ensures destruction to those who attempt to transgress the racial boundaries of marriage. Her story, like Brown’s, highlights the inherent inequality in American institutions like that of marriage.

As noted, gothic and sentimental tropes enhance Child’s strategy. Rosalie becomes a ghostly mother figure, haunting the narrative as a “dreadful [reminder] that transgressing the laws of patriarchy is often fatal to oneself and others.”^[18] In this case, Child manipulates the traditional Gothic mother (who would be a white character) by also warning of the dangers of transgressing the laws of a white patriarchy. By proxy, transgressing the American marriage institution, specifically. In reference to the larger genre of sentimental fiction, Jennifer Fleishner calls Child’s female characters “textual versions of Pamela,” as they are “worthy of high romance” but “doomed to endure the moral pain of fallen women, or the physical and psychological torments (imprisonment, beatings, threat, rape) of enslaved serving women.”^[19] Child’s adaptation of this figure results in the formulation of the “tragic mulatta,” defined by Raimon as a mixed-race woman who endures tragic circumstances due to both her gender and her race.”^[20] Furthermore, Raimon argues that “depictions of intermarriage in general and the mulatta figure in particular functioned as a rhetorical device that at once excoriated the workings of the slavocracy, destabilized the naturalness of racial hierarchies, and provided an occasion to envision an egalitarian future of racial reconciliation.”^[21] Brown’s use of this figure, according to Raimon, was not just to destabilize hierarchies, but to specifically attack the foundational institutions of America.^[22] Interestingly, Raimon still calls Clotel a “veritable transcription” of Child’s narrative, though she highlights his altered use of the figure. However, this revision is key, because he recasts Child’s characters as descendants of Thomas Jefferson—a (literal and figurative) founding father:

Thus closed a negro sale, at which two daughters of Thomas Jefferson, the writer of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the presidents of the great republic, were disposed of to the highest bidder!^[23]

In turn, Brown identifies a theme in Child’s narrative (the dangers of a white patriarchy) and subverts it, to more clearly target those who think themselves immune to the dangers of Child’s story. In other words, Brown implies that even creators of the system—such as the families of founding fathers—are not immune to the consequences of the instabilities of a system grounded in an unreliable, unstable understanding of race. And, metaphorically, all American readers were “children” of Jefferson in the sense that he is a founding father of an entire nation, not just his own children. So, in line with Raimon’s aforementioned claim regarding Brown’s attack on foundational institutions, Brown’s recasting of Child’s story directly enables him to target the racialized nature of all systems in America—by way of Jefferson’s descendants or, by proxy, Americans. Therefore, the tragedy at the heart of both stories could be very real indeed, to readers of Brown’s work, as the narrative “fictionalizes” the (poorly) hidden relationship between Jefferson and Hemings and speculates a future for all Jefferson’s descendants, actual and metaphorical.

With this, as Levine mentions, Brown makes additional revisions that give his female characters more agency. This does not result in a happier ending for all—though Mary does move to London and marry (a proper sentimental ending). In Brown’s text, Jane Morton, one of Althesa’s daughters, experiences Xarifa’s narrative, though she has considerably more control. In “The Quadroons,” Xarifa’s master locks her in his “princely mansion” and tries to win her affections with “respectful gentleness” and gifts.^[24] Xarifa and George—her lover—bribe a slave, who promises to drug Xarifa’s master and build a rope ladder from her room to the ground. However, “to obtain a double reward,” the slave was “treacherous,”^[25] so Xarifa’s master shoots George and he lies “bleeding and lifeless” at Xarifa’s feet (before she fully descends the rope). Shortly thereafter, Xarifa’s master “grew weary of her obstinacy,” and raped her. This rape, as mentioned, results in Xarifa’s madness and consequently her death.

Instead of transcribing Child’s narrative directly, Jane (the adapted Xarifa) does not trust another enslaved person with her escape—“She dared not trust the old negress”^[26]—instead,  she communicates directly with Volney (her lover), who appears outside of her window (Brown makes him perhaps unrealistically accessible). Jane and Volney plot the rope ladder escape on their own: “He had in his hand a rope ladder. As soon as Jane saw this, she took the sheets from her bed, tore them into strings, tied them together, and let one end down the side of the house. A moment more, and one end of the rope ladder was in her hand, and she fastened it inside the room.”^[27] Jane descends the ladder and embraces Volney, before her master arrives. It is during their embrace that Jane’s master kills Volney and, like George, he lies bleeding at Jane’s feet. Though awarding Jane an embrace does not necessarily enhance her agency, it does make Brown’s narrative more tragic—a final kiss, interrupted—which highlights his expertise in sentimental writing beyond simply “plagiarizing” Child. Finally, Brown revises Child’s rape scene. Rather than going mad, “the slow recovery of [Jane’s] reason settled into the most intense melancholy, which gained at length the compassion even of her cruel master… in a few days the girl died of a broken heart.”^[28] Brown spares Jane from the violence attributed to Xarifa, but also depicts her master gaining compassion. Though perhaps not a realistic—or comfortable—image of a slave owner, this revision suggests that Brown believed even the worst of men could revise themselves and their values through observing the lives of the women around them. His interest in revisionist adaptation, then, applies to both the form and content of his narrative: human beings, like texts, can (and should) change due to dramatic changes in their situations. Brown’s writing becomes a model for adaptation in writing and in behavior, as even the most morally corrupt characters are provoked by emotional circumstances.

Though Raimon refers to Brown’s revisionist adaptation as a “veritable transcription” of Child’s story, she later admits that “Brown appropriates and diverges from the original version—formally as well as thematically.”^[29] Furthermore, she examines “the significance of Brown’s having at once, in essence, stolen Child’s story and, at the same time, built upon it a complex overlay of historical material—imaginative and documentary combined—that finally challenges US readers’ conceptions of American nationalism itself and the ‘naturalness’ of identity at work at the moment of their nation’s very origin.” ^[30] Though I (still) resist the metaphorical theft—after all, Child still had possession of her own narrative for all intents and purposes^[31]—Raimon’s notion of simultaneity is appealing and extremely similar to reading practices related to adaptation. As a product and a process—at the same time—theories about adaptation speak to complicated nature of simultaneity.

 Part II: The Dangers of Discourse

Raimon is not the only scholar to entertain language about adaptation alongside plagiarism in an attempt to better understand Brown and Clotel. Problematically, while some call Brown a proto-postmodernist, many call him a plagiarist, due to his extensive use of allusion, citation, and pastiche. Levine and Raimon both lean on plagiaristic language (“kidnapping” and “stealing,” respectively) to describe Brown’s practices. Sanborn’s name for Brown’s writing, “Plagiarama”^[32] confronts (and adapts) “plagiarism” directly, while others continue to find creative ways around the word, though they remain (unfortunately and unintentionally) attached to the negative connotations of the term. John Ernest’s term, “cultural editor,”^[33] is perhaps the most appealing, and the most cited—though it still undercuts Brown’s role as a mastermind adaptor—editing culture, I argue, is only a fragmented view of Brown’s intricate process, at least when the term is co-opted outside of Ernest’s scholarship. Ultimately, each scholar provides important critical readings of Clotel that explore the aesthetics, challenges, and critiques within his work. However, as I demonstrate in the above reading of Clotel, the presence of plagiarism overshadows the presence of adaptation, which functions as both form and central theme in Clotel.

That being said, I find Sanborn’s “Plagiarama” to be the closest existing term to Brown’s practice: not because his writing is that closely related to plagiarism, but because Sanborn adapts the term and, by proxy, models Brown’s own behavior in his scholarly writing about Brown’s writing. Sanborn’s study is almost a meta-adaptation in itself. And, Sanborn acknowledges that plagiarism doesn’t feel right, when applied to Brown’s practices. Rather than the prototypical sign of weakness, Sanborn argues, such excessive “plagiarism” actually indicates “a wide-ranging awareness of, and freedom with, the materials of one’s culture.”^[34] Ultimately, though, Brown’s “freedom with” the materials of his culture challenge critical understandings of his textual unities: does Clotel make sense? Is there a “practical” purpose behind his citations?^[35] What is the central meaning of the text? Reading Clotel as an adaptation encourages critics to move beyond questions of why Brown rewrites as he does, to instead ask how his process of rewriting impacts reading the text (and readers of the text). Instead of considering Clotel as what Sanborn calls a “vehicle for attractions, abolitionist and otherwise,”^[36] Clotel may be better visualized as an environment, in which upon entering readers must adapt to the unstable circumstances and challenge their own ideas of stability. As a result of Brown’s adaptation, readers must adapt. Interestingly, too, Brown revised the novel to affect different audiences in different ways, which suggests the text itself was as adaptable as its audience. As duCille states, “I can think of no novel other than Clotel, in any tradition, that was revised and republished four different times under four different titles, certainly not in a 14-year period… each version of Brown’s novel is pitched to a different audience and engages a different market.”^[37] Ultimately, Brown’s revisionist adaptation—both in product and in process—far exceeds plagiarism or the sole acts of allusion, citation, or pastiche. And, though chaotic, through this lens his practices seem more unified, centralized, and meaningful than scholars previously admit.

Brown’s already marginalized status as an African American writer makes plagiarism discourse even more problematic, as he already does not meet institutional expectations (formal literary rules that categorize and define authors and texts) for African American writers. While Brown’s texts have begun to enter the academic literary canon (a Bedford edition of the text at least exists), Clotel remains relatively unknown compared to popular, traditional slave narratives or other nineteenth-century texts that better fit what the average American expects an African American writer to produce. Clotel is not a slave narrative, for one, and Brown does not rely on accurate chronology to approach the “historical” aspects of his narrative. Even his “autobiographical” slave narrative, which appears as a prologue to Clotel, is not consistent with other drafts and recordings of his verbal performances. Brown was skilled performer and he was (and is) not, bluntly, what predominantly white institutions imply that he should be, as a nineteenth-century writer and as an African American man. And, Clotel is perhaps not what literature “should” be (“high” literature), in the sense that it does not follow a traditional form and—at times—intentionally provokes chaos in the reader’s sense of coherency. Ernest admirably leaves expectations for “high” literature at the door: “I have tried to avoid bringing to this task assumptions about what literature should be and how it should work,” he writes, “looking instead for ways to understand what this literature is and how it does work.”^[38] In a similar vein, Ann duCille describes literary expectations for African American writers as a “big boogeyman” that determines how they should (or should not) write:

the big boogeyman that haunts not only Clotel but a great deal of nineteenth-century African American literature: a prescriptive sense of ‘the right direction,’ a tendency on the part of contemporary critics to privilege a particular notion of black identity and ‘the black experience’ and to fault early writers for, in essence, not being 100 years ahead of their time.^[39]

Though the etymology of plagiarism predates Brown, the contemporary label of plagiarism carries contemporary connotations. In other words, the label impacts how readers understand Brown and, by proxy, nineteenth-century African American culture and history. Even more general conceptualizations of originality and unoriginality, when applied to textual theories, carry drastically different expectations than they did 100 years ago. Furthermore, reprinting practices were common in the nineteenth century, though Lara Cohen admits that attitudes to literary property “had a tendency to splinter along the color line.”^[40] So, Brown’s race played a pivotal role in analyses of his writing—which I argue extends to his reputation today as a “plagiarist.” Such a splinter supports alternative readings of Clotel and Brown, especially as academics reckon with marginalization and temporal separation.

Though official definitions of plagiarism differ slightly, it is safe to assume that the practice is frowned upon, especially if the author is outside of the literary canon.^[41] In fact, moralistic judgement appears even in the standard MLA definition of plagiarism. According to the 8^th edition of the MLA Handbook, plagiarism is “presenting another person’s ideas, information, expressions, or entire work as one’s own. It is thus a kind of fraud: deceiving others to gain something of value… it is always a serious moral and ethical offense.”^[42] Furthermore, regarding the actor: “plagiarists are seen not only as dishonest but also as incompetent, incapable of doing research and expressing original thoughts. When professional writers are exposed as plagiarists, they are likely to lose their jobs and are certain to suffer public embarrassment, diminished prestige, and loss of future credibility.”^[43] While Brown engages in some of these activities—presenting another’s ideas, deceiving others, being dishonest—he is hardly deserving of diminished prestige and he is not an unethical, immoral offender. And, Brown does not pretend that the intertextual moments are his own. Near the end of Clotel, Brown acknowledges his sources:

I may be asked, and no doubt shall, Are the various incidents and scenes related founded in truth? I answer, Yes. I have personally participated in many of those scenes. Some of the narratives I have derived from other sources; many from the lips of those who, like myself, have run away from the land of bondage… To Mrs. Child of New York, I am indebted for part of a short story. American Abolitionist journals are another source from whence some of the characters appearing in my narrative are taken.^[44]

Though it is not a Works Cited Page that would satisfy the academy, Brown’s acknowledgement represents the culture he writes within and highlights his intentions, as well as his tact. Furthermore, if one were to steal or kidnap a text… would they address the “owner” directly upon announcing they have their property? Likely not.

Brown’s acknowledgements not only challenge theft metaphors, but also speak to the highly intertextual print culture of his time. African American print culture—and nineteenth century print culture more generally—encouraged and regularly practiced reprinting, which—at first glance—may seem like plagiarism to a contemporary reader. For clarity, Lara Cohen and Jordan Alexander Stein “distinguish between ‘print,’ a technology that fixes impressions, and ‘print culture,’ a world in which print both integrates with other practices and assumes a life of its own.”^[45] And, on Brown, Cohen insists that, “any attempt to understand Clotel’s radical intertextuality must begin by acknowledging that citation and reprinting were common practice in antebellum print culture.”^[46] Therefore, African American scholars and others familiar with this culture may very well be comfortable simply referring to Brown’s practices as reprinting—which materializes his process and rebuts his canonical displacement. Adaptation is a part of this practice: the term appears in the organizing principles of Cohen and Stein’s volume; “circulation, representation, adaptation, and publics.”^[47] However, even in the description of this cluster, Cohen and Stein resort back to plagiarism as an apt descriptor of African American adaptation processes: “African American producers rewrote, repurposed, and imaginatively plagiarized from previously published materials.”^[48] Generally, I view the inclusion of adaptation (the term) as an opening for collaborative scholarship. Adaptationists have theoretical models available—such as Stam’s conceptual understanding of revisionist adaptation seen in this essay—that can assist with terminological negotiations as scholars investigate these practices. In short, I believe that both fields can work together to better understand what is to “imaginatively plagiarize” as a cultural practice in nineteenth-century America, without the added implications of modern-day plagiarism. Additionally, like Cohen, Stein, and other African American print culturists, adaptationists have a vested interest in exploring a “media culture whose impact on everyday life scholars are only beginning to understand.”^[49] The work of adaptation scholars such as Kamilla Elliott (2020) and Lissette Lopez Szwydky (c2020) have already begun using transhistorical approaches to analyzing and theorizing adaptation—Brown’s work, particularly Clotel, complements these efforts and better develops the history of adaptation with consideration to African American culture and community.

Part III: Reading Clotel through Adaptation

Ultimately, I argue that African American print culture practices—which include Brown’s specific innovations—fall under the broader “invisible” genre of adaptation,^[50] that encourages reading texts simultaneously with their various source texts. Furthermore, framing Clotel as adaptation explores the deeper connections between adaptation and intertextuality, as Brown’s vigorous text features hundreds of intertextual relationships. While this argument examines one such relationship in-depth to highlight some of his revisions, the narrative overall is like a party in a ballroom, as various conversations between hundreds of texts occur at once. In this sense, a Bakhtinian understanding of adaptation functions as a useful lens through which to understand the entire reading experience of Clotel—from each individual engagement, like that with “The Quadroons,” to the larger, more centralized conversation that occurs as a result of Brown’s narrative. Rooted in Bakhtin’s dialogism,^[51] Dennis Cutchins explains that, “dialogic thought suggests that the study of adaptations, broadly understood, is not peripheral to the study of literature… but is foundational to all textual studies.^[52] Though all of the Brown scholars I cite likely appreciate Brown and admire his practices, they remain grounded in—or at least infected by—institutional understandings of plagiarism that do not explore the complex relationship between vast intertextuality, adaptation, and the creative forces that might inspire these practices (however one chooses to delineate them). Plagiaristic frameworks (at best) leave room for moralistic judgements and (at worst) invite it—adaptation, on the other hand, provides ample ground to explore it.

The field of Adaptation Studies resonates with Brown, in the sense that both entities share a past checkered with moralistic judgements and accusations of unoriginality. “Adaptation,” Lisette Lopez Szwydky writes, “is typically understood as a secondary feature of storytelling—a ‘derivative’ practice, the antithesis of artistic ‘originality.’ ^[53] And, though fidelity discourse is long out of practice in academic adaptation circles, infidelity to beloved “source” texts continue to upset audiences. Adaptations are often considered weak, derivative, or even parasitic: according to Robert Stam, readers fear an adaptation will “burrow into the body of the source text and steal its vitality.”^[54] These readers play with similar metaphors as Brown’s scholars, relating to theft, kidnapping, stealing, and more. Of course, Brown’s scholars likely have a higher sense of admiration for Brown’s intentions, but this does not separate their metaphors from those damaging adaptations and, by proxy, prevents the development of a better understanding of all cultural practices of rewriting—including African American print culture.

However, Adaptationists have come a long way in “taking back” their terminology to not just avoid moralistic judgements, but to attack them directly. Julie Grossman empowers “hideous” adaptations through their elastextity: “More elastic adaptations,” she writes, “seek to invent new ways of rewriting or interpreting preexisting texts and influences and prod readers and viewers to expand their understanding of texts and of textual influence. These adaptations may be experienced as ‘hideous’ because,” she continues, “from the perspective of seeking ‘truthful’ representations of single sources internalized by their readers or audiences, they so often seem ‘unsightly’” (16). Brown’s combination of sources—historical narratives, rumors, autobiography, and “The Quadroons,” to name only a few—lead to such an “unsightly” adaptation, in the sense that readers feel disoriented, unsure, and unclear of centralized meaning. However, “rather than fleeing the [metaphorical Frankenstein-ian] laboratory,” Grossman proposes, readers are “called upon to read the story in a new context and asked to meet the [adaptation] on its own terms, rather than projecting onto it our internalized ‘home text’ and running from its hideousness.”^[55] Rather than attacking an internalized ‘home text,’ Brown’s work attacks the notions that readers regularly associate with African American writing. His work attacks “the big bogeyman” duCille describes, as he deviates from the internalized cultural script readers associate with Brown and Black writers—problematically, to this day.

Furthermore, “hideous” adaptations are not always so recognizable to audiences. Most audiences expect to recognize an adaptation from an “inspired by” label, or an intertitle in a film adaptation. As Szwydky writes, “many reject the term ‘adaptation’ unless it’s used to describe a very specific cultural product, such as a play directly derived from a textual source and used as evidence for the text’s or author’s excellence.”^[56] Arguably, Brown does this in his acknowledgement to Child, but his vast intertextuality beyond just Child’s texts confuses the typical association. In other words, Clotel is not just a rewriting of “The Quadroons,” but an array of rewriting, reimaginations, and direct reprinting, which differentiates the narrative from the recognizable cultural product. All things considered, “from a historical perspective,” Szwydky argues, “part of what makes the study of adaptation especially compelling lies in the difficulty of narrowing down a transhistorical cultural phenomenon that can refer to many products and processes at the same time.”^[57] Compelling and empowering, as Brown’s practices—through the lens of adaptation—become part of a larger transhistorical practice. In other words, by contextualizing Brown through a nuanced understanding of revisionist adaptation in the nineteenth-century, readers better understand the creativity and complexity of his work. And Brown’s writing can participate in a much larger dialogue about African American experiences within American institutions, then and now, propelled by the adaptation of White “canonical,” historical, and “literary” fictions.

But, what of Brown’s other “plagiarisms?” Are his “copies” from other texts, aside from Child’s, a part of his revisionist adaptation? Julie Sanders argues that “mere” citation is “different…from adaptation, which constitutes a more sustained and deeper engagement usually within a single text or source, than the more glancing act of allusion or quotation, even citation, allows.”^[58] But, she continues, “appropriation carries out the same sustained engagement of adaptation but frequently adopts a posture of critique, overt commentary and even sometimes assault or attack.”^[59] And, “appropriations,” Sanders adds, “do not always make their founding relationships and interrelationships explicit. The gesture towards the source text can be wholly more shadowy than in the above examples, and this brings into play, sometimes in controversial ways, questions of intellectual property, proper acknowledgement and, at its worst, the charge of plagiarism.”^[60] So, all though not all of Brown’s sources are treated equally, I argue that they function as a larger body of appropriation of the canon itself. In other words, Brown’s treatment of his citations functions as the form of “sustained engagement” that distances adaptation from “mere” citation (or plagiarism) in the first place. For instance, Sanborn dedicates 53 pages of his study to Brown’s citations, which materially suggests Brown’s engagements are not just a “passing glance” at the sources. Such excessive citation in itself, then, is certainly an “extended engagement,” and Sanders does not at any point say—nor do other Adaptationists—that each hypotext must be explored equally.

Ultimately, “hideous” adaptations and appropriation describe the process at the heart of Brown’s creation, Clotel. Because of the unique nature of the text—its “hideousnesss”—readers are unsure how to classify it. Similarly, scholars do not know how to understand it, or where to derive meaning from Brown’s narrative if he uses (and perhaps even abuses) so many sources. However, “hideous” adaptations hold considerably more agency than plagiarisms, as they attack, extend, and manipulate source texts and meaning as they engage new readers.

Conclusion

Though I only glance at some of Clotel’s 55 sources, this project intends to reposition Brown in such a way that invites further consideration.^[61] Right now, Clotel appears predominantly in African American literature courses—some of which, I presume, carry the “big bogeyman’s” expectations and apply them to Brown’s writing. More recent scholarship in African American print culture, such as the collection edited by Cohen and Stein, helps alleviate those expectations, though, as I’ve argued here, they do not completely override the negativity associated with plagiarism. And college classrooms do not always (if even regularly) assign secondary texts related to print culture (an emerging field) when Brown appears on the syllabus—though every syllabus, I might add, contains a hefty warning about the dangers, immorality, and pitfalls of plagiarism.

Though adaptation theories are less common than adaptations themselves in college classrooms, adaptation studies provides an ample interdisciplinary lens to view African American print culture, which is an abundant, emerging field of study in need of more attention and resources. However, due to the slow attention from book historians, Cohen and Stein assert that progress in understanding African American literature as a key part of print culture has been slow. “This neglect,” they claim, “is all the more surprising given the abundance of potential material:

In colonial and antebellum America, the African Americans featured prominently in literary production both on the page (as writing subjects as well as subjects of writing) and off (as readers, editors, printers, engravers, compositors, papermakers, libraries, and so on). The sheer breadth and diversity of their experiences has a great deal to tell us about American print culture, while their omission from critical accounts renders even the freshest reconsiderations of the field inevitably partial.”^[62]

Adaptations (as products and practices) are also dominant players in literary production, though transhistorical approaches to adaptation—like this project—in the nineteenth-century are rare: “Despite four decades of scholarship to draw on,” Szwydky writes, “adaptation studies still doesn’t have a well-known history of its own outside of specialized circles.”^[63] Though, she adds, “the reverse is also true. Nineteenth-century cultural histories that include literary adaptations would benefit from conversations taking place in contemporary adaptation studies.”^[64] And, there is an even wider gap between African American cultural histories and adaptation studies, that also stands to (seriously) benefit from interdisciplinary conversations. In sum, African Americanists and Adaptationists need to further investigate the intersections in their respective cultural practices, as current boundaries in both fields only marginalize authors like Brown and other African American adaptors.

To some, repositioning Brown as such is only a small alteration. The scholars I’ve cited do talk about the pitfalls of plagiarist discourse and protect Brown, when they can, against the negative connotations. Plagiarism might seem like a simple word choice, easily remedied by justification for the specific kind of plagiarism—because that’s what he does, isn’t it? Readers will understand, won’t they? These objections are short-sighted. As Brown emerges from the margins, it is crucial to avoid broad, culturally loaded language with the capability to send him back. As Brown’s work hopefully, inevitably appears in more reading spaces (institutional and public), his practices will be further removed from individuals who can differentiate his plagiarism from that plagiarism.

In conclusion, a transhistorical approach to reading Clotel as adaptation protects the text from future marginalization and respects his efforts as an adaptationist, in a time before adaptation was formally recognized as a lucrative creative practice. Furthermore, “positioning adaptation as a primary entry point into the study of literature, culture, and history reveals that,” Szwydky argues, “although forms and media continuously change and evolve, the process that undergrids the historical trajectory of storytelling—adaptation—remain stable and perpetual.”^[65] Clotel’s instability continues to baffle even Brown’s most ardent supporters—within a larger culture of intertextual play, however, his instability becomes a stable creative practice that invites readers to question their own expectations and reading experiences. I’ve mentioned the ways in which Brown challenges the institution of marriage and the conceptualization of a unified, “founding father,” so I add here that his text, as adaptation, challenges the notion of categorization by race and readerly expectations of African American authors. Why should his narrative, in this sense, have to “make sense” in the ways that readers were institutionally conditioned to expect it to?

Though I argue that Clotel benefits from adaptation theories, I want to also suggest that this relationship is reciprocal—Brown, as an adaptationist, was also foregrounding adaptation reading models through his writing. In other words, reading Clotel through the lens of adaptation provokes broader questions about other African American texts that may seek to challenge categorization. What new discoveries might be made, from adaptations, appropriations, and not that kind of plagiarisms? How can Clotel, as an adaptation, challenge institutional conceptions of originality and rewriting?  In the conclusion to his chapter on Clotel, Ernest argues that “it is difficult to claim that Brown was successful, given the history not only of the United States but also of critical responses to [Clotel]. But,” he writes, “Clotel waits beyond ethereal critical categories and narratives—waits in closer fields for those looking to construct more intimate and revealing histories, working this time from the ground up.”^[66] Adaptation provides a method through which to read “from the ground up,” with respect to Clotel’s intertextuality and also its originality—distinct from the ethical and moral stains of plagiarism discourse.

Acknowledgement: I want to thank Dr. John Ernest at the University of Delaware for his encouragements regarding this project.

End Notes

^[1] “In describing [the world of Clotel],” John Ernest writes, “critics have been so frustrated by the presence of so many sources and plots in one text that they have had trouble seeing the one in the many—a unified artistic achievement greater than the sum of its parts.”

^[2] Sanborn, Geoffrey. Plagiarama!: William Wells Brown and the Aesthetic of Attractions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 5.

^[3] Qtd. in Cohen, Lara Langer. “Notes from the State of Saint Domingue: The Practice of Citation in Clotel.” Early African American Print Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 161.

^[4] Sanborn, 8.

^[5] Sanborn, 14.

^[6] Szwydky, Lissette Lopez. Transmedia Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century (Ohio State University Press, 2020), 212.

^[7] “What is the significance of the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag?” Brittanica Encyclopedia (2023).

^[8] Szwydky, 133.

^[9] Szwydky, 3.

^[10] Stam, Robert. “Revisionist Adaptation: Transtextuality, Cross-Cultural Dialogism, and Performative Infidelities.” The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. Thomas Leitch (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 239. (my italics)

^[11] Levine, 319.

^[12] Levine, 320.

^[13] Brown, 198.

^[14] Sanborn, 163 – 176.

^[15] Child, Lydia Marie. “The Quadroons.” Clotel; Or, The President’s Daughter, ed. Robert S. Levine, A Bedford Cultural Edition (Boston; New York, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011), 322.

^[16] Child, 329.

^[17] Child, 329.

^[18] Davison, Carol Margaret. History of the Gothic: Gothic Literature 1764 – 1824 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 102.

^[19] Fleishner, Jennifer. “Mothers and Sisters: The Family Romance of Antislavery Women Writers.” Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds: Feminism and the Problem of Sisterhood (New York: New York University Press, 1994), 3.

^[20] Raimon, Eve Allegra. The Tragic Mulatta Revisited: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Antislavery Fiction (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 5.

^[21] Raimon, 63.

^[22] Raimon, 63 – 64.

^[23] Brown, 88.

^[24] Child, 328.

^[25] Child, 328.

^[26] Brown, 198.

^[27] Brown, 198.

^[28] Brown, 199.

^[29] Raimon, 65.

^[30] Raimon, 66.

^[31] Ernest, John. (Personal Correspondence)

^[32] Sanborn, 12.

^[33] Ernest, 23.

^[34] Sanborn, 15.

^[35] Cohen, “Notes from the State of the Saint Domingue,” 165.

^[36] Sanborn, 79 – 81.

^[37] duCille, 452.

^[38] Ernest, x.

^[39] duCille, 453.

^[40] Cohen, 165.

^[41] For authors safely inside of the literary canon, such as Laurence Sterne, plagiarism is less of a concern… and terminologically less involved in their legacies.

^[42] MLA Handbook, 8^th Edition (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2016), 16.

^[43] MLA Handbook, 8^th Edition, 16.

^[44] Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter. A Bedford Cultural Edition, edited by Robert Levine (Boston; New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011), 226.

^[45] Cohen, Lara Langer and Jordan Alexander Stein. Early African American Print Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 7.

^[46] Cohen, “Notes from the State of the Saint Domingue,” 165.

^[47] Cohen and Stein, 8.

^[48] Cohen and Stein, 11.

^[49] Cohen and Stein, 15.

^[50] Leitch, Thomas. “Adaptation, the Genre.” Adaptation, vol. 1, no. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2008), 106.

^[51] For more information, see: Bakhtin, MM. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holoquist (Austin; London: University of Texas Press, 1981).

^[52] Cutchins, Dennis. “Bakhtin, Intertextuality, and Adaptation.” The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studied, edited by Thomas Leitch (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017), 71.

^[53] Szwydky, 1.

^[54] Stam, Robert and Alessandra Raengo. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 7.

^[55] Grossman, Julie. Literature, Film, and Their Hideous Progeny (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 17.

^[56] Szwydky, 13.

^[57] Szwydky, 8.

^[58] Sanders, Julie. Adaptation and Appropriation (London; New York: Routledge, 2006), 6.

^[59] Sanders, 6.

^[60] Sanders, 43.

^[61] Sanborn, 14.

^[62] Cohen and Stein, 3.

^[63] Szwydky, 12.

^[64] Szwydky, 12.

^[65] Szwydky, 3.

^[66] Ernest, 54.