''The Algerine Captive: or the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill: Six Years a Prisoner among the Algerines'' is one of America's first novels, published anonymously in 1797 by early American author Royall Tyler. The novel takes the form of a fictitious

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

Plot summary

''The Algerine Captive'' tells the story of the upbringing, early career, and later enslavement of fictional

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

native, narrator Updike Underhill. The first volume chronicles Updike Underhill's youth and early adulthood in America; the Preface suggests that its aim is to "at least display a portrait of New England manners, hitherto unattempted." After detailing his family history, Underhill describes his birth, childhood, and early education. Upon the encouragement of a local minister, Underhill's parents agree to prepare the narrator for college by placing him under the minister's tutelage. Underhill's classical education, through which he learns Greek and Latin, provides him with the ability to recite copious lines of poetry, which his countrymen ridicule.Crain, Caleb (2002). "Introduction". In Royall Tyler, ''The Algerine Captive or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill'', pp. xxvii. New York: Modern Library. Not only is he mocked for his spouting of Greek poetry, which is unintelligible to all but himself, but he is actually challenged to a duel after writing an unintentionally insulting Greek-inspired ode to a young lady. Luckily for Underhill, the duel is discovered and preempted by the local sheriffs and constables before it can take place. This volume also gives an account of Underhill's failed attempt to serve as a teacher in a village school, follows his travels through the Northern and Southern states as a physician, and discusses his service as a surgeon aboard a

slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast ...

that heads to Africa by way of London. In the final chapter of this volume, while Updike is on the African coast nursing five sick slaves back to health, he is captured and taken as a slave to Algiers. In the second volume, Updike describes his enslavement and gives an account of the country in which and the people among whom he is confined. By setting Algiers in opposition to America, this part of the novel leads Underhill to comment on and formulate his conception of what it means to be American. When he is freed at the novel's conclusion, therefore, the message he imparts to the reader is a nation-building one: "My ardent wish is, that my fellow citizens may profit by my misfortunes. If they peruse these pages with attention they will perceive the necessity of uniting our federal strength to enforce a due respect among other nations...BY UNITING WE STAND, BY DIVIDING WE FALL."Tyler, Royall. ''The Algerine Captive Or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill''. New York: The Modern Library: 2002. p. 226.

Form of novel

Numerous formal elements distinguish ''The Algerine Captive''. The novel's division into two volumes allows for a natural break in the narrative between life in America and in North Africa. It is thought the two volumes also differ greatly in tone: Volume 1 follows the format of "a satire and a picaresque," whereas Volume 2 is dominated by "earnestness" and abolitionist sentiment. In addition, each brief chapter within the two volumes begins with an epigraph and an "Argument," which details the proceedings of the chapter in a summary, which sometimes misleads the reader by inaccurately representing the chapter's contents.

Reception

''The Algerine Captive'' was popular enough that it was reprinted in England, becoming only the second American novel to achieve that distinction.

Notes

References

*Crain, Caleb (2002). "Introduction". In Royall Tyler, ''The Algerine Captive or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill'', pp. xvii-xxxiii. New York: Modern Library. . *Davidson, Cathy N. ''Revolution and the Word: The Rise of the Novel in America.'' 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. *Gardner, Jared. ''Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature 1787-1845.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. *Mackenthun, Gesa. “The Transoceanic Emergence of American ‘Postcolonial’ Identities.’ In ''A Companion to the Literatures of Colonial America'', edited by Susan Castillo and Ivy Schweitzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2005. *Tyler, Royall. ''The Algerine Captive: Or, the Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill.'' New York: The Modern Library, 2002. *University of Virginia Library
University of Virginia Library: Early American Fiction
Retrieved May 8, 2005. *West Virginia University

Retrieved May 8, 2005.

Plot summary

Form of novel

Reception

Notes

References

Further reading