Veteran Americans Literature and Citizenship from Revolution to Reconstruction / Benjamin Cooper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cooper, Benjamin, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Veterans in literature.

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

American literature.

American literature--18th century--History and criticism.

Veterans as authors--United States--History--19th century.

Veterans as authors.

Veterans as authors--United States--History--18th century.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (175 pages)

Manufacture:

Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2018

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2018]

Summary:

"I may dare to speak, and I intend to speak and write what I think," wrote a New York volunteer serving in the Mexican War in 1848. Such sentiments of resistance and confrontation run throughout the literature produced by veteran Americans in the nineteenth century--from prisoner-of-war narratives and memoirs to periodicals, adventure pamphlets, and novels. Military men and women were active participants in early American print culture, yet they struggled against civilian prejudice about their character, against shifting collective memories that removed military experience from the nation's self-definition, and against a variety of headwinds in the uneven development of antebellum print culture. In this new literary history of early American veterans, Benjamin Cooper reveals how these men and women from the Revolutionary War through the Civil War demanded, through their writing, that their value as American citizens and authors be recognized. Relying on an archive of largely understudied veteran authors, Cooper situates their perspective against a civilian monopoly in defining American citizenship and literature that endures to this day" -- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Revolutionary captivity. 1776-1820: Mary Rowlandson, Ethan Allen, Lemuel Roberts, Thomas Dring

Civilian memories and veteran memoir 1820-1830: James Fenimore Cooper, John Andre, Joseph Plumb Martin, Enoch Crosby, Thomas Painter

A bunch of veteran amateurs. 1830-1865: Charles Cummings, Israel Potter, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, William Richardson

The real and written war. 1865-1880: William Oland Bourne, John William De Forest.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-61376-570-3

OCLC:

1043646124