Righteous violence : revolution, slavery, and the American renaissance / Larry J. Reynolds.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Reynolds, Larry J. (Larry John), 1942-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authors, American--19th century--Political and social views.

Authors, American.

Politics and literature--United States--History--19th century.

Politics and literature.

Literature and society--United States--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Political violence in literature.

Social change in literature.

Antislavery movements--United States--History--19th century.

Antislavery movements.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (275 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens, Ga. : University of Georgia Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Righteous Violence examines the struggles with the violence of slavery and revolution that engaged the imaginations of seven nineteenth-century American writers-Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville. These authors responded not only to the state terror of slavery and the Civil War but also to more problematic violent acts, including unlawful revolts, insurrections, riots, and strikes that resulted in bloodshed and death. Rather than position these writers for or against the struggle for liberty, Larry J. Reynolds examines the profoundly contingent and morally complex perspectives of each author. Tracing the shifting and troubled moral arguments in their work, Reynolds shows that these writers, though committed to peace and civil order, at times succumbed to bloodlust, even while they expressed ambivalence about the very violence they approved. For many of these authors, the figure of John Brown loomed large as an influence and a challenge. Reynolds examines key works such as Fuller's European dispatches, Emerson's political lectures, Douglass's novella The Heroic Slave, Thoreau's Walden, Alcott's Moods, Hawthorne's late unfinished romances, and Melville's Billy Budd. In addition to demonstrating the centrality of righteous violence to the American Renaissance, this study deepens and complicates our understanding of political violence beyond the dichotomies of revolution and murder, liberty and oppression, good and evil.

Contents:

Margaret Fuller's revolutionary example

Emerson, guns, and bloodlust

Douglass, insurrection, and the heroic slave

Contemplation versus violence in Thoreau's world

Violent virtue and Alcott's moods

Pacifism, savagery, and Hawthorne's last romances

The revolutionary times of Melville's Billy Budd.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613253064

9781283253062

1283253062

9780820342115

0820342114

OCLC:

759037137