Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s

Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s
Author :
Publisher : Lexington Books
Total Pages : 237
Release :
ISBN-13 : 9781611493849
ISBN-10 : 1611493846
Rating : 4/5 (46 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s by : David Grant

Download or read book Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s written by David Grant and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appalled and paralyzed. Abandoned and betrayed. Cowed and bowed. Thus did Frederick Douglass describe the North in the wake of the compromise measures of 1850 that seemed to enshrine concessions to slavery permanently into the American political system. This study discovers in a feature of political anti-slavery discourse—the condemnation of an enfeebled North—the key to a wide variety of literary works of the 1850s. Both the political discourse and the literature set out to expose the self-chosen degradation of compromise as a threat at once to the personal foundation of each individual Northerner and to the survival of the people as an actor in history. The book fills a gap in literary criticism of the period, which has primarily focused on abolitionist discourse when relating anti-slavery thought to the literature of the decade. Though it owed a debt to the abolitionists, political anti-slavery discourse took on the more focused mission of offering a challenge to the people. Would the North submit to the version of self-discipline demanded by the Slave Power’s Northern minions, or would it tap the energy of the nation’s founding until it embodied defiance in its very constitution? Would the North remain a type for the future slave empire it could not prevent, or would it prophesy national freedom in the simple recovery of its own agency? Literary works in both poetry and prose were well suited to making this political challenge bear its full weight on the nation—fleshing out the critique through narrative crises that brought home the personal stake each Northerner held in what George Julian called an exodus from the bondage of compromise. By the end of 1860 this exodus had been completed, and that accomplishment owed much to the massive ten year cultural project to expose the slavery-accommodating definition of nationality as a threat to the republican selfhood of each Northerner. Stowe, Whittier, Willis, and Whitman, among others, devoted their literary works to this project.


Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s Related Books

Political Antislavery Discourse and American Literature of the 1850s
Language: en
Pages: 237
Authors: David Grant
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-03-22 - Publisher: Lexington Books

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Appalled and paralyzed. Abandoned and betrayed. Cowed and bowed. Thus did Frederick Douglass describe the North in the wake of the compromise measures of 1850 t
John Quincy Adams and the Gag Rule, 1835–1850
Language: en
Pages: 120
Authors: Peter Charles Hoffer
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-11-01 - Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Examining the congressional debates on antislavery petitions before the Civil War. Passed by the House of Representatives at the start of the 1836 session, the
Provocative Eloquence
Language: en
Pages: 297
Authors: Laura L. Mielke
Categories: Performing Arts
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-02-26 - Publisher: University of Michigan Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the mid-19th century, rhetoric surrounding slavery was permeated by violence. Slavery’s defenders often used brute force to suppress opponents, and even th
Slavery and Sentiment
Language: en
Pages: 540
Authors: Christine Levecq
Categories: Literary Criticism
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-07-03 - Publisher: UPNE

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Illuminates the political dimensions of American and British antislavery texts written by blacks
Why Antislavery Poetry Matters Now
Language: en
Pages: 309
Authors: Brian Yothers
Categories:
Type: BOOK - Published: 2023-06-20 - Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book is a history of the nineteenth-century poetry of slavery and freedom framed as an argument about the nature of poetry itself: why we write it, why we