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Autobiography, from Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life to J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, has long been a popular genre that both authors and readers have utilized to understand particular political moments. As this book argues, such narratives have also contributed to the development of American political thought, despite the fact that the field has not taken autobiography seriously as political theory in its own right. This book considers the political contexts in which Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, Henry Adams, Emma Goldman, and Whittaker Chambers wrote their autobiographies to better understand not only the political problems to which autobiographical works can be a solution, but the broader appeal of such claims of experience to the everyday life of democratic politics.
Having drawn on local knowledge and private information for The Spy and on his own boyhood experiences for The Pioneers, it was inevitable that Cooper would seek a way to convert yet another area of his special knowledge into art. His first choice of career had been the U.S. Navy, in which he served as a midshipman from 1808 to 1810. In 1823, Cooper began writing The Pilot, which he saw as a sea novel that seamen would appreciate for its fidelity and yet one that landsmen could understand. "Cooper's poetic power is reserved for the sea, which is no backdrop but a separate world with forces and laws of its own. The individuation of the ships, particularly the personification of the Ariel, contributes to the magic, but the exhilaration of the book comes from the triumph of human skill and intelligence over the uncertainties and downright hostilities of a world of waves, winds, and hidden reefs. The land offers neither a comparable challenge nor so heady a victory." — from the Introduction.
From 1929 to the latest issue, American Literature has been the foremost journal expressing the findings of those who study our national literature. American Literature has published the best work of literary historians, critics, and bibliographers, ranging from the founders of discipline to the best current critics and researchers. The longevity of this excellence lends a special distinction to the articles in American Literature. Presented in order of their first appearance, the articles in each volume constitute a revealing record of developing insights and important shifts of critical emphasis. Each article has opened a fresh line of inquiry, established a fresh perspective on a familiar topic, or settled a question that engaged the interest of experts.
A leading scholar of English romanticism and literary theory and criticism, Hazard Adams writes of a lifetime as a student, a teacher and an academic administrator. The child of academically-minded parents, both teachers at Cleveland's Hawken School, Adams tells of his family's experiences at Hawken and later Seattle's Lakeside School, then his Marine Corps service and education at Princeton and the University of Washington. In addition to an illuminating account of his academic career--his experiences researching and teaching in Ireland, his administrative work in the founding faculty at the University of California's Irvine campus, and finally his experiences under the first endowed professorship in the humanities at the University of Washington--the memoir also voyages into memories of family, friends and colleagues and offers singularly well-informed comments on the current state of higher education and the academic experience.
In this engaging study of the much-loved statesman and polymath, Robert Middlekauff uncovers a little-known aspect of Benjamin Franklin's personality—his passionate anger. He reveals a fully human Franklin who led a remarkable life but nonetheless had his share of hostile relationships—political adversaries like the Penns, John Adams, and Arthur Lee—and great disappointments—the most significant being his son, William, who sided with the British. Utilizing an abundance of archival sources, Middlekauff weaves episodes in Franklin's emotional life into key moments in colonial and Revolutionary history. The result is a highly readable narrative that illuminates how historical passions can torment even the most rational and benevolent of men.
I have taught a graduate course on the history of the information and communications industry for 20 years. The course shows students how the world has moved from primitive communication to the integrated multi-media situation we are in today. Concentration is on the fields of journalism, telecommunications, broadcasting, and computing. Emphasis is placed on the leaders of the areas and the political and cultural surroundings that encouraged or discouraged growth of the industry. It is true that technology is a driving force of this industry, but it has been the individual people (characters) impelled by discovery, acceptance and marketability of that technology who have taken the next step ...
The four new essays in Lincoln's Legacy describe major ethical problems that the sixteenth president navigated what can be learned from how he did so. The distinguished and award-winning Lincoln scholars William Miller, Mark E. Neely Jr., Phillip Shaw Paludan, and Mark Summers describe Lincoln’s attitudes and actions during encounters with questions of politics, law, constitutionalism, patronage, and democracy. The remarkably focused essays include an assessment of Lincoln's virtues in the presidency, the first study on Lincoln and patronage in more than a decade, a challenge to the cliché of Lincoln the democrat, and a study of habeas corpus, Lincoln, and state courts. On the eve of the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth, Lincoln’s Legacy highlights his enduring importance in contemporary conversations about law, politics, and democracy.
Romantic writers such as Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge aspired to rise above the so-called 'age of personality,' a new culture of politicized print gossip and personal attacks. Nevertheless, Southey, Coleridge, and other Romantic-era figures such as Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, Sydney Owenson, and the explorer John Ross became enmeshed in lively feuds with the major periodicals of the day, the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review. Kim Wheatley focuses on feuds from the second and third decades of the nineteenth century, suggesting that by this time the vituperative rhetoric of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly had developed into what Coleridge called 'a habit of malignity.' A...
Incarnations of fatal women, or femmes fatales, recur throughout the works of women writers in the Romantic period. Adriana Craciun demonstrates how portrayals of femmes fatales or fatal women played an important role in the development of Romantic women's poetic identities and informed their exploration of issues surrounding the body, sexuality and politics. Craciun covers a wide range of writers and genres from the 1790s through the 1830s. She discusses the work of well-known figures including Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as lesser-known writers like Anne Bannerman. By examining women writers' fatal women in historical, political and medical contexts, Craciun uncovers a far-ranging debate on sexual difference. She also engages with current research on the history of the body and sexuality, providing an important historical precedent for modern feminist theory's ongoing dilemma regarding the status of 'woman' as a sex.