The fugitive's properties : law and the poetics of possession / Stephen M. Best.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Best, Stephen Michael.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. Uncle Tom's cabin.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher.

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Slavery in literature.

Fugitive slaves--Legal status, laws, etc--United States.

Fugitive slaves.

Law and literature--History--19th century.

Law and literature.

African Americans in literature.

Fugitive slaves in literature.

Property in literature.

Race in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (375 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In this study of literature and law before and since the Civil War, Stephen M. Best shows how American conceptions of slavery, property, and the idea of the fugitive were profoundly interconnected. The Fugitive's Properties uncovers a poetics of intangible, personified property emerging out of antebellum laws, circulating through key nineteenth-century works of literature, and informing cultural forms such as blackface minstrelsy and early race films. Best also argues that legal principles dealing with fugitives and indebted persons provided a sophisticated precursor to intellectual property law as it dealt with rights in appearance, expression, and other abstract aspects of personhood. In this conception of property as fleeting, indeed fugitive, American law preserved for much of the rest of the century slavery's most pressing legal imperative: the production of personhood as a market commodity. By revealing the paradoxes of this relationship between fugitive slave law and intellectual property law, Best helps us to understand how race achieved much of its force in the American cultural imagination. A work of ambitious scope and compelling cross-connections, The Fugitive's Properties sets new agendas for scholars of American literature and legal culture.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Debts

Introduction: The Slave's Two Bodies

Pro Bono Publico: Chapter Two. The Fugitive's Properties: Uncle Tom's Incalculable Dividend

Sine Qua Non: Chapter Three. Counterfactuals, Causation, and the Tenses of "Separate but Equal"

Conclusion: The Rules of the Game

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-351) and index.

ISBN:

9786612584695

9781282584693

1282584693

9780226241111

0226241114

OCLC:

635292207