The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction

This is an accessible, path-breaking, and carefully-curated Companion written by leading scholars of the American Civil War and Reconstruction.

Kathleen Diffley (Edited by), Coleman Hutchison (Edited by)

9781009159197, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 18 August 2022

375 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 2.2 cm, 0.54 kg

The legacies of the Civil War and Reconstruction remain a central part of American life a century and a half later. Drawing together leading scholars in literary studies and history, this volume offers accessible treatments of major authors and genres of this period, including Walt Whitman, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Rebecca Harding Davis, Frederick Douglass, and Charles Chesnutt, as well as fiction, poetry, drama, and life-writing. Although focused on literature, this Companion also canvases battlefields, homefronts, and hospitals, and discusses a range of topics, including constitutional reform and presidential impeachment; emancipation and Africa; material culture and monuments; education, civil rights, and reenactment. The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Civil War and Reconstruction speaks powerfully to literature's ability to help readers come to terms with a violent, oppressive history while also imagining a different future.

Part I. The Blind Ruck of Event: 1. Violent identifications: Civilian sectional rhetoric's during the American civil war Kimberly L. Harrison
2. Reading, sociability, and warfare Sarah E. Gardner
3. Reconstructing the civil war literature of injury, illness, and convalescence: caregivers, soldiers, and civilians Jane E. Schultz
4. “The home and the camp so inseparable”: Northern fictions and the union cause Allison M. Johnson
5. The confederacy and other southern fictions Katharine A. Burnett
6. The civil war ballad and its reconstruction Timothy Sweet
7. The unfinished drama of the American civil war Matthew Rebhorn
8. Walt Whitman and the reconstructive impulse of leaves of grass Samuel Graber
9. Reconsidering Moses: Frances Ellen Watkins harper and reconstruction Eric Gardner
10. From “Facts” to “Pictures”: Rebecca Harding Davis and civil war memory Alicia Mischa Renfroe
Part II. Worlds Made and Remade: 11. The literature of reconstruction and the worlds the civil war might have made Brook Thomas
12. Frederick Douglass, Andrew Johnson, and the work of reconstruction Robert S. Levine
13. African Americans, Africa, and the long watch night for freedom Barbara McCaskill
14. Literature and the material cultures of confederate remembrance Kristen Treen
15. Elmira and the postwar geographies of black monumentalizing Jill Spivey Caddell
16. Charles Chesnutt and the reconstruction of black education Tess Chakkalakal
17. Charles Chesnutt, the colonel's dream, and the futures of cotton Jennifer James
18.Brown v. Board, the civil war centennial, and the literature of civil rights Michael LeMahieu
19. The future of civil war and reconstruction literature Cody Marrs
20. Reenactment as resistance Patricia Davis.

Subject Areas: American Civil War [HBWJ], Literary companions, book reviews & guides [DSRC], Literary studies: general [DSB]