Rhetorical Drag: Gender Impersonation, Captivity, and the Writing of History

An innovative discussion of this unique genre of American literature

In this fresh examination of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century American captivity narratives, author Lorrayne Carroll argues that male editors and composers impersonated the women presumed to be authors of these documents. This “gender impersonation” significantly shaped the authorial voice and complicated the use of these texts as examples of historical writing and as women’s literature. Carroll contends th...