The Aesthetics and Politics of the Crowd in American Literature

ISBN-13: 9780521814881 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 274 str.

Mary Esteve; Albert Gelpi; Ross Posnock

Opis

As a central icon of political and cultural democracy, the crowd occupies a prominent place in the American literary and cultural landscape. Mary Esteve examines a range of writing by Poe, Hawthorne, Du Bois, James, and Stephen Crane to provide a study of crowd representations in American literature from the antebellum era to the early twentieth century. She argues that these writers examined the aesthetic and political meanings of urban crowd scenes.

Recenzje

'The Aesthetics and Politics of the Crowd offers both an authoritative and informative analysis of the role of the crowed in American literature as well as a sequence of original and compelling readings of canonical authors.' Journal of American Studies

Spis treści

List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. When travellers swarm forth: antebellum urban aesthetics and the contours of the political; 2. In 'the thick of the stream': Henry James and the public sphere; 3. A 'gorgeous neutrality': social justice and Stephen Crane's documentary anaesthetics; 4. Vicious gregariousness: white city, the nation form and the souls of lynched folk; 5. A 'moving mosaic': Harlem, primitivism and Nella Larsen's Quicksand; 6. Breaking the waves: mass immigration, trauma and ethno-political consciousness in Cahan, Yezierska and Roth; Notes; Bibliography; Index.