Specters of democracy : blackness and the aesthetics of nationalism in the antebellum U.S. / Ivy G. Wilson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilson, Ivy G.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

African Americans in literature.

Democracy in literature.

Nationalism in literature.

African American authors--Political and social views.

African American authors.

Discourse analysis, Literary.

Rhetoric--Political aspects--United States--History.

Rhetoric.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (250 p.)

Place of Publication:

New York : Oxford University Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This text interrogates the representational strategies that 19th-century Americans used in art and literature to delineate blackness as an index to the forms of US citizenship. The book reveals how the task of representing African Americans in imaginative expression was part of a larger dilemma concerning representative democracy.

Contents:

Introduction : in the shadows of citizenship : African Americans and the alterity of democracy

Frederick Douglass's "glib-tongue" : African American rhetoric and the language of national belonging

Merely rhetorical : virtual democracy in William Wells Brown's Clotel

Rhythm nation : African American poetics and the discourse of freedom

Black and tan fantasy : Walt Whitman, African Americans, and sounding the nation

Framing the margins : geometries of space and American genre painting

The spectacle of disorder : race, decoration, and the social logic of space

The colored museum : William "Ethiop" Wilson and the Afric-American picture gallery.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-19-534035-3

1-283-23558-7

9786613235589

0-19-971404-5

OCLC:

753704455