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This book scrutinizes the texts of the Negro spirituals, performed during the antebellum era and contemporarily acclaimed as sacred songs, to expose their subtle secular content. The study proceeds by interrogating the spirituals against the backdrop of the slavery context using Freud s psychoanalytic theory to reveal both the conscious and unconscious earthly concerns ingrained in the texts. The symbolism that characterizes the texts is duly subjected to contextual interpretation to yield a myriad of subterranean protest discourses that the slaves engaged in through the spirituals. The study establishes that the Negro spirituals were largely a response to the socio-political slavery situation of the performers, who conveniently took advantage of the sacred-secular continuum in their African ancestry, to criticize the slavery institution while effectively evading the slave owners strict censure.

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JAMES ODHIAMBO OGONE comes from Kakiki village, Kisumu East District, Kenya. He holds a Masters of Arts in Literature from Maseno University, Kenya. He is an experienced high school teacher of English and Literature who also holds a Bachelor of Education (Arts) degree from Moi University.

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