With a Barbarous Din

Race and Ethnic Encounter in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Literature

by Jeanne Cortiel

Book cover: With a Barbarous Din

Extent: 281 pages

Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter

Subjects: American Studies, Literary Studies

Series: American Studies - A Monograph Series

Series volume number: 266

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(February 2016)

ISBN: 9783825365578

5.28 x 8.27 inches

Price: $50.00

Out of stock

This study re-examines the mid-1850s, a time that remains central to American literary studies, exploring new ways of looking at this cultural moment through the twentieth-century concept of ‘ethnicity.’ This approach uncovers the hidden subversiveness of American literature as it responded to scientific race theory in the debate over slavery and also highlights the ways in which the texts examined in this study – Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno (1855), Frederick Douglass’ ‘My Bondage and My Freedom’ (1855), Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ‘Dred’ (1856), Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ (1855), and John Rollin Ridge’s ‘The Life and Adventures of Joaqin Murieta’ (1854) – powerfully resonate with ideas of affiliation and difference today. Focusing on a brief historical moment in the past from a decidedly twenty-first century perspective, the study reflects upon the texts’ movement through time and demonstrates how race and ethnicity in these texts have been transformed under the pressures of history.

  • By (author) Jeanne Cortiel