Liberty as a Plural Mode: The Bounds of Romantic Subjectivity in Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’

Abstract

This essay examines liberty in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ as a mode which aims at freedom to a ‘state of being’ that supplants the traditional negative-positive freedom binary. Confined by the egoic limitations of Romantic subjectivity, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ asserts its state of being between the desire to transcend a human state and acceptance of its impossibility. Douglass, however, goes beyond this limitation, using the Romantic ego as a literary tool to self-authorise a conscious literary work. Douglass reaches a state of being that transcends the limitations of Keats, asserting an individual freedom which necessarily furthers his community aim of abolition of chattel slavery.