The Aesthetics and Politics of the Crowd in American Literature

Mary Esteve is Assistant Professor in the English Department at Concordia University, Montréal. Her work has appeared in ELH, American Literary History, and Genre.

'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

• 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.