American Literature in Transition, 1820–1860: Volume 2

This volume offers exciting new approaches to the historical contexts, global coordinates, and present reverberations of antebellum American literature.

Justine S. Murison (Edited by)

9781108475365, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 June 2022

350 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.9 cm, 0.774 kg

The essays in American Literature in Transition, 1820-1860 offer a new approach to the antebellum era, one that frames the age not merely as the precursor to the Civil War but as indispensable for understanding present crises around such issues as race, imperialism, climate change, and the role of literature in American society. The essays make visible and usable the period's fecund imagined futures, futures that certainly included disunion but not only disunion. Tracing the historical contexts, literary forms and formats, global coordinates, and present reverberations of antebellum literature and culture, the essays in this volume build on existing scholarship while indicating exciting new avenues for research and teaching. Taken together, the essays in this volume make this era's literature relevant for a new generation of students and scholars.

1. Introduction: Literature for democracy Justine S. Murison
I. Fractures and Continuities: 2. Hemisphere Rodrigo Lazo
3. Empire John Levi Barnard
4. Economy David Anthony
5. Religion Christine Hedlin and Toni Wall Jaudon
6. Nature Kyla Schuller
7. Removal Gina Caison
8. Abolition Martha Schoolman
II. Forms and Formats: 9. Romance Emily Ogden
10. Theatre Michelle Granshaw
11. Popular poetry Michael C. Cohen
12. Sentimentality Tess Chakkalakal
13. African American print culture Derrick Spires
14. Sexuality in print Jordan Alexander Stein
15. Seriality Dale Bauer
16. Unoriginality Claudia Stokes
III. Authors and Figures: 17. Apess/Sedgwick Ashley Reed
18. Child/Thoreau Susan Ryan
19. Douglass/Walker Marcy Dinius
20. Emerson/Poe Christopher Hanlon
21. Fuller/Stowe Dorri Beam
22. Hawthorne/Winthrop Christopher Castiglia
23. Melville/Whitman Kelly Ross
24. Harper/Stewart Nazera Sadiq Wright.

Subject Areas: Literary reference works [DSR], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]