A01=Michael T. Gilmore
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america
antebellum
Author_Michael T. Gilmore
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bartleby
billy budd
bostonians
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DSBF
chestnutt
civil disobedience
cooper union
COP=United States
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dissent
disunion
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
expression
feminism
frederick douglass
freedom
hawthorne
henry james
history
indian question
jackson
Language_English
lincoln
literature
lynching
margaret fuller
melville
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politics
Price_€20 to €50
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race
racism
reconciliation
rhetoric
silence
slavery
softlaunch
speaking
speech
stephen crane
stowe
thomas dixon
thoreau
tourgee
twain
utterance
voice
whitman
Product details
- ISBN 9780226101699
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 16 x 22mm
- Publication Date: 06 Dec 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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How did slavery and race affect American literature in the nineteenth century? In this ambitious book, Michael T. Gilmore argues that they were the carriers of linguistic restriction, and writers from Frederick Douglass to Stephen Crane wrestled with the demands for silence and circumspection that accompanied the antebellum fear of disunion and the postwar reconciliation between the North and South. Proposing a radical new interpretation of nineteenth-century American literature, The War on Words examines struggles over permissible and impermissible utterance in works ranging from Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" to Henry James' The Bostonians. Combining historical knowledge with groundbreaking readings of some of the classic texts of the American past, The War on Words places Lincoln's Cooper Union address in the same constellation as Margaret Fuller's feminism and Thomas Dixon's defense of lynching. Arguing that slavery and race exerted coercive pressure on freedom of expression, Gilmore offers here a transformative study that alters our understanding of nineteenth-century literary culture and its fraught engagement with the right to speak.
Michael T. Gilmore is the Paul Prosswimmer Professor of American Literature at Brandeis University.
