Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The founding text of the African American autobiographical tradition — Douglass's 1845 first-person testimony of his enslavement and escape
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (Early (the first of Douglass's three autobiographies)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Both |
| Observer · Number | Singular |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Personal |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Scripture |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The autobiographical-historical time of slavery and escape; the kairos-time of the confrontation with Covey.
Space
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The Maryland slave country; the northern free states; the Atlantic geography of antebellum slavery.
Matter
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The embodied enslaved body; the literacy that transforms the enslaved person into self-narrating subject.
Observer
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Douglass himself as the singular first-person narrator; the enslaved person made into testifying subject.
Energy
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The energies of bondage, resistance, escape, and rhetorical-political testimony.
Information
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
The testimony preserved in autobiography; the broader abolitionist archive.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
Douglass's three autobiographies present substantially different self-narratives — subsequent scholarship (William Andrews, Robert Stepto) has analysed the development. The 1845 Narrative's relation to the 1855 My Bondage and My Freedom (much longer, with fuller political analysis) is the central interpretive question. Douglass's philosophical-theological development from the Garrisonian abolitionism of 1845 to the more autonomous political-philosophical position of his later career is itself a major story.