Reforming the world
Subtitle: social activism and the problem of fiction in nineteenth-century America
By: María Carla Sánchez.
Publisher: University of Iowa Press; University Of Iowa Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Iowa City
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9781587296949
Subjects: American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Social change in literature; Social problems in literature; Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Description: "Reforming the World considers the intricate relationship between social reform and spiritual elevation and the development of fiction in the antebellum United States. Arguing that novels of the era engaged with questions about the proper role of fiction taking place at the time, Maria Carla Sanchez illuminates the politically and socially motivated involvement of men and women in shaping ideas about the role of literature in debates about abolition, moral reform, temperance, and protest work. She concludes that, whereas American Puritans had viewed novels as risque and grotesque, antebellum reformers elevated them to the level of literature - functioning on a much higher intellectual and moral plane." "In her informed and innovative work, Sanchez considers those authors both familiar (Lydia Maria Child, Harriet Jacobs, and Harriet Beecher Stowe) and those all but lost to history (Timothy Shay Arthur). Along the way, she refers to some of the most notable American writers in the period (Emerson, Thoreau, and Poe). Illuminating the intersection of reform and fiction, Reforming the World visits important questions about the very purpose of literature, telling the story of "a revolution that never quite took place," one that had no grandiose or even catchy name. But it did have numerous settings and participants: from the slums of New York, where prostitutes and the intemperate made their homes, to the offices of lawyers who charted the downward paths of broken men, to the tents for revival meetings, where land and souls alike were "burned over" by the grace of God."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-233) and index.
Table of contents: title: The devil and his angels; title: The panic of 1837 and the failures of literary men; title: Sentimentalizing the fallen woman; title: Making history with Child and Stowe; title: Saying goodbye to Timothy Shay Arthur.