Del 7 - Interventions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture

Liminal Whiteness in Early US Fiction

Häftad, Engelska, 2023

Av Hannah Lauren Murray, University of Liverpool) Murray, Hannah Lauren (Lecturer in American Literature

719 kr

Beställningsvara. Skickas inom 3-6 vardagar

Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

Finns i fler format (1)

Inbunden

1 809 kr

Skickas inom 7-10 vardagar

An in-depth examination of liminality and race in early US fictionOffers a Critical Whiteness study of early US fiction with innovative readings of canonical and lesser-known textsBrings together fiction and multiple discourses on White racial identity in the early US: natural history, medical science, blackface minstrelsy, abolitionism and anti-abolitionism, mesmerism, spiritualismContributes to ongoing work in early US fiction race studies by reading White male characters as figures of othernessHannah Lauren Murray shows that early US authors repeatedly imagined lost, challenged and negated White racial identity in the new nation. In a Critical Whiteness reading of canonical and lesser-known texts from Charles Brockden Brown to Frank J. Webb, Murray argues that White characters on the border between life and death were liminal presences that disturbed prescriptions of racial belonging in the early US. Fears of losing Whiteness were routinely channelled through the language of liminality, in a precursor to today's White anxieties of marginalisation and minoritisation.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-02-06
Mått156 x 234 x 20 mm
Vikt336 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieInterventions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture
Antal sidor216
FörlagEdinburgh University Press
ISBN9781474481748

Tillhör följande kategorier

Litteraturvetenskap inom Skonlitteratur
Etnicitet inom Samhalle och politik

Hannah Lauren Murray is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Liverpool. Her research centres on race and citizenship in nineteenth-century American literature, with a specific focus on speculative genres. She has previously published in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (2020), The Oxford Handbook of Charles Brockden Brown (Oxford UP, 2019) and the Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (2017) and she sits on the steering committee for the British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA).

Acknowledgements A Note on Language Introduction: Inexplicable Voices: Liminal Whiteness in the Early United States 1. ‘A shriek so terrible!’: Charles Brockden Brown’s Sensational Ventriloquists 2. ‘This is a story-telling age’: Spectral Nostalgia in Washington Irving’s Bracebridge Hall 3. ‘What had become of me?’: Sheppard Lee’s Blackface Transformation 4. ‘I say to you that I am dead!’: Edgar Allan Poe's Protesting Cadavers 5. ‘How can I speak to thee?’: Herman Melville’s Muted Voice 6. ‘I’m making a white man of him’: Making and Breaking Whiteness in The Garies and their Friends Coda: The Resurrection of Whiteness BibliographyIndex

In a quick coda, Murry powerfully connects the dots to the United States today, showing how fears of white marginality continue fueling the powerfully exclusionary logics of whiteness. This is a book that is generous to its predecessors across an array of fields, and that gives new liveliness and relevance to familiar debates about the destructive innovation of white citizenship in the newly United States.