Word in Black and White : Reading Race in American Literature, 1638-1867.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1992Copyright date: ©1992Description: 1 online resource (208 pages)Content type: text Media type: computer Carrier type: online resourceISBN: 9780195362145Subject(s): American literature -- 1783-1850 -- History and criticism | American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism | American literature -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- History and criticism | American literature -- White authors -- History and criticism | Minorities in literature | Race in literatureGenre/Form: Electronic books.Additional physical formats: Print version:: Word in Black and White : Reading Race in American Literature, 1638-1867DDC classification: 810.9355 LOC classification: PS173.E8N4Online resources: Click to ViewIntro -- Contents -- 1. An Uncommon Need: "Race" in Early American Literature -- 2. Economies of Morality and Power: Reading "Race" in Two Colonial Texts -- 3. Romancing the Border: Bird, Cooper, Simms, and the Frontier Novel -- 4. W/Righting History: Sympathy as Strategy in Hope Leslie and A Romance of the Republic -- 5. Ethnocentrism Decentered: Colonial Motives in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym -- 6. "For the Gaze of the Whites": The Crisis of the Subject in "Benito Cereno -- 7. "Read the Characters, Question the Motives": Harriett Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z.
Nelson provides a study of the ways in which Anglo-American authors constructed "race" in their works from the time of the first British colonists through the period of the Civil War. She focuses on some eleven texts, ranging from widely-known to little-considered, that deal with therelations among Native, African, and Anglo-Americans, and places her readings in the historical, social, and material contexts of an evolving U.S. colonialism and internal imperialism. Nelson shows how a novel such as The Last of the Mohicans sought to reify the Anglo historical past andsimultaneously suggested strategies that would serve Anglo-Americans against Native Americans as the frontier pushed further west. Concluding her work with a reading of Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Nelson shows how that text undercuts the racist structures of the pre-CivilWar period by positing a revised model of sympathy that authorizes alternative cultural perspectives and requires Anglo-Americans to question their own involvement with racism.
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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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