Shifting the Blame: Literature, Law, and the Theory of Accidents in Nineteenth Century America

ISBN-13: 9780415926843 / Angielski / Miękka / 1999 / 214 str.

Nan Goodman

Opis

Early 19th century Americans were only concerened with whether an accident had happened rather than why. Nan Goodman takes this transformation in legal and popular thought about the nature of accidents as a starting point for a broad inquiry into changing conceptions of individual agency. Goodman looks to both conventional historical sources and the literary depiction of accidents in the work of Mark Twain, Stephen Crane and others to explain the new ways that Americans began to make sense of the unexplained.

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 A Clear Showing; Chapter 3 Negligence before the Mast; Chapter 4 “Nobody to Blame”; Chapter 5 The Law of the Good Samaritan; Chapter 6 Stop, Look, and Listen; Chapter 7 Epilogue;

O autorze

Nan Goodman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder.