SOURCE: “The Fugitive Self and the New World of the North: William Wells Brown's Discovery of America,” in The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture, Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 99-111.

In the following essay, Mulvey explicates Brown's interest in the paradox of the European “discovery” of America.

Columbia is the poetical name for America, and the Columbiad is the poetical name for the journey to the New World. This journey is a quest, but it is a quest for special prizes, special riches which represent both the idea of a New World and the idea that that New World should be one distinct from a world known, explored, and exhausted. For the inhabitants of the New World that is Columbia, the Old World that is Europe is a place of tyranny and imprisonment, a world that denies to all but kings, emperors, and popes...