Interventions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture – serie

New research on Freeman's fiction that challenges and expands earlier feminist readings of the female realmContextualizes key developments in Freeman criticism since 1991Moves beyond an analysis of the short stories for which Freeman is best known to examine her novels Pembroke (1894), Madelon (1896), and The Portion of Labor (1901); stories for youths and uncollected stories; and post-1902 fiction from her late careerUpdates approaches to Freeman by considering ecocriticism, race, labor and class, transnationalismReconsiders periodization: Freeman is read as a modernist and a World War One writer whose long, evolving career questions critical readings of her work within the confines of turn-of-the-century realism and regionalismRaises important questions about single-author scholarship and argues for new critical views that go beyond the single authorInvolves a transatlantic array of scholars (based in the US, the UK, Finland, France, Turkey, Lithuania) at different stages of their career from some long-time specialists of Freeman to some international PhD studentsFreeman is best known today for her short regionalist fiction. Recently, Freeman studies have taken new turns including ecocriticism, trauma studies, the Gothic, and queer theory. The essay collection pushes these developments further. Contributors aim at revisiting and going beyond Freeman's regionalism. They challenge earlier feminist readings of the female realm by arguing that her short fiction and novels depict women and girls as violent and criminal, suffocating as well as nurturing; they bring to light questions of race and ethnicity that have been conspicuously absent from scholarship on Freeman, as well as issues of class. Because questions of women's work are central to Freeman's oeuvre, this collection discusses Freeman's acumen as a businesswoman herself, a participant as well as a castigator of turn-of-the-century US capitalism. Finally, essays reconsider the periodization of Freeman by exploring her little acknowledged post-1902 and therefore post-marriage fiction her war stories and her urban stories.

Freeman is best known today for her short regionalist fiction. Recently, Freeman studies have taken new turns including ecocriticism, trauma studies, the Gothic, and queer theory. The essay collection pushes these developments further. Contributors aim at revisiting and going beyond Freeman’s regionalism. They challenge earlier feminist readings of the female realm by arguing that her short fiction and novels depict women and girls as violent and criminal, suffocating as well as nurturing; they bring to light questions of race and ethnicity that have been conspicuously absent from scholarship on Freeman, as well as issues of class. Because questions of women’s work are central to Freeman’s oeuvre, this collection discusses Freeman’s acumen as a businesswoman herself, a participant as well as a castigator of turn-of-the-century US capitalism. Finally, essays reconsider the periodization of Freeman by exploring her little acknowledged post-1902 and therefore post-marriage fiction—her war stories and her urban stories.

Drawing examples from over 200 English-language and Spanish-language newspapers and periodicals published between January 1855 and October 1901, Paratextuality in Anglophone and Hispanophone Poems in the US Press, 1855 1901 argues that nineteenth-century newspaper poems are inherently paratextual. The paratextual situation of many newspaper poems (their links to surrounding textual items and discourses), their editorialisation through circulation (the way poems were altered from newspaper to newspaper) and their association and disassociation with certain celebrity bylines, editors and newspaper titles enabled contemporaneous poetic value and taste that, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, were not only sentimental, Romantic and/or genteel. In addition to these important categories for determining a good and bad poem, poetic taste and value were determined, Bonifacio argues, via arbitrary consequences of circulation, paratextualisation, typesetter error and editorial convenience.

Drawing examples from over 200 English-language and Spanish-language newspapers and periodicals published between January 1855 and October 1901, Paratextuality in Anglophone and Hispanophone Poems in the US Press, 1855 1901 argues that nineteenth-century newspaper poems are inherently paratextual. The paratextual situation of many newspaper poems (their links to surrounding textual items and discourses), their editorialisation through circulation (the way poems were altered from newspaper to newspaper) and their association and disassociation with certain celebrity bylines, editors and newspaper titles enabled contemporaneous poetic value and taste that, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, were not only sentimental, Romantic and/or genteel. In addition to these important categories for determining a good and bad poem, poetic taste and value were determined, Bonifacio argues, via arbitrary consequences of circulation, paratextualisation, typesetter error and editorial convenience.

How do transnational Asian American novels and poems reimagine the classics of nineteenth-century American literature? The Asian American Renaissance: Literary Encounters Across Time is the first scholarly investigation into the formal and archival links between canonical authors such as Whitman, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Melville and their twentieth-century Asian American counterparts. It investigates how a transnational group of authors Carlos Bulosan, Younghill Kang, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Eileen Chang inherit the American Renaissance as both a racial allegory and a supplier of literary forms such as the romance and the jeremiad.

Emersonian Circles demonstrates the often-overlooked importance of the Southern Hemisphere in the nineteenth century as a region of enormous creative activity and as a voracious audience for foreign literature. It focuses on the US Transcendentalists, and their relationship – directly and indirectly - with writers in Latin America, Southern Africa and Australia. It reconsiders canonical American figures, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau, arguing that the Southern Hemisphere was essential to their understanding of the world and presents a broader transnational appreciation of writers often confined to Western, Northern or Transatlantic frameworks. Equally, it provides the first study of how several nineteenth-century communities south of the equator adapted Transcendentalism to suit local needs, contending that a double-sided account of these interactions can enrich our interpretations of both US and world literary texts, enabling new approaches to be taken on questions of race, settler colonialism, Romantic nationalism and globalisation.

Across four parts of exploratory, creative and speculative essays, this book provides provocative frameworks and readings of canonical and non-canonical literature. The essays cover off-the-map places, warped historical chronologies, excessive selves, unlikely meetings and systemic incommensurability. Collectively they define original methods, categories and terrains for the study of the American cultural past. Altogether, this collection interrogates some of the most dominant critical moves of the past two decades and proposes alternative ways of working and thinking with the American nineteenth century.

Across four parts of exploratory, creative and speculative essays, this book provides provocative frameworks and readings of canonical and non-canonical literature. The essays cover off-the-map places, warped historical chronologies, excessive selves, unlikely meetings and systemic incommensurability. Collectively they define original methods, categories and terrains for the study of the American cultural past. Altogether, this collection interrogates some of the most dominant critical moves of the past two decades and proposes alternative ways of working and thinking with the American nineteenth century.

Hannah 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.

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.

Examining the transatlantic writings and professional careers of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, this book explores the impact of literary, cultural, political and legal manifestations of authority on nineteenth-century British and American writing, publishing and lecturing. Drawing on primary texts in conjunction with a rich body of archival sources, this study retraces Romantic debates about race and nationhood, analyses the relationship between cultural nationalism and literary historiography and sheds light on Carlyle’s and Emerson’s professional identities as publishing authors and lecturing celebrities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Analyses Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson against the background of Anglo-American print culture and oral performanceDevelops a new analytical framework for the study of nineteenth-century transatlantic writing that combines literary studies, book history and cultural sociologyReframes canonical works through unfamiliar texts and contextsDraws on a rich body of archival sources and historical periodical publicationsOffers an in-depth account of nineteenth-century Anglo-American print culture and the transatlantic lecture systemExamining the transatlantic writings and professional careers of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, this book explores the impact of literary, cultural, political and legal manifestations of authority on nineteenth-century British and American writing, publishing and lecturing. Drawing on primary texts in conjunction with a rich body of archival sources, this study retraces Romantic debates about race and nationhood, analyses the relationship between cultural nationalism and literary historiography and sheds light on Carlyle's and Emerson's professional identities as publishing authors and lecturing celebrities on both sides of the Atlantic.

(P)rescription Narratives reveals how the act of narrative creates the subjects of disability, race, and gender during a period of censorship in American history. In a Crip Affect reading of woman-authored medical fiction from the Comstock Law era, this book astutely argues that women writers of medical fiction practice storytelling as a form of narrative medicine that prescribes various forms of healing as an antidote to the shame engineered by an American culture of censorship. Woman-authored medical fiction exposes the limitations of social construction and materiality in conversations about the female body since subject formation relies upon multiple force relations that shape and are shaped by one another in ongoing processes that do not stop despite our efforts to interpret cultural artifacts. These multiple failures to censor, to resist, to interpret open up a space for negotiating how we engage the world with greater empathy.