The aesthetics and politics of the crowd in American literature / Mary Esteve.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Esteve, Mary, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 135.

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 135

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Crowds in literature.

Politics and literature--United States.

Politics and literature.

Literature and society--United States.

Literature and society.

Collective behavior in literature.

City and town life in literature.

Immigrants in literature.

Lynching in literature.

Aesthetics, American.

Mobs in literature.

Race in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 262 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

The Aesthetics & Politics of the Crowd in American Literature

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Mary Esteve provides a study of crowd representations in American literature from the antebellum era to the early twentieth century. As a central icon of political and cultural democracy, the crowd occupies a prominent place in the American literary and cultural landscape. Esteve examines a range of writing by Poe, Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, Du Bois, James, and Stephen Crane among others. These writers, she argues, distinguish between the aesthetics of immersion in a crowd and the mode of collectivity demanded of political-liberal subjects. In their representations of everyday crowds, ranging from streams of urban pedestrians to swarms of train travellers, from upper-class parties to lower-class revivalist meetings, such authors seize on the political problems facing a mass liberal democracy - problems such as the stipulations of citizenship, nation formation, mass immigration and the emergence of mass media. Esteve examines both the aesthetic and political meanings of such urban crowd scenes.

Contents:

When travelers swarm forth: antebellum urban aesthetics and the contours of the political

In 'the thick of the stream': Henry James and the public sphere

A 'gorgeous neutrality': social justice and Stephen Crane's documentary anaesthetics

Vicious gregariousness: white city, the nation form, and the souls of lynched folk

A 'moving mosaic': Harlem, primitivism, and Nella Larsen's Quicksand

Breaking the waves: mass immigration, trauma, and ethno-political consciousness in Cahan, Yezierska, and Roth.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-255) and index.

ISBN:

1-107-13386-6

1-280-16133-7

0-511-12064-8

1-139-14820-6

0-511-06497-7

0-511-05864-0

0-511-30581-8

0-511-48549-2

0-511-07343-7

OCLC:

57123405