Bathed in Blood
Subtitle: Hunting and Mastery in the Old South
Publisher: University of Virginia Press; University Press of Virginia
Published: April 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780813920870
Subjects: American history: c 1500 to c 1800; American history: c 1800 to c 1900; Cultural studies; Hunting or shooting animals & game; c 1700 to c 1800; c 1800 to c 1900; Social aspects; Hunting - General; Sports & Recreation; History: American; Central Southern states; Southeastern & South Atlantic states; Southern States; Hunting; United States - General; History; Philosophy; Psychological aspects
First sentence: ONE OF THE central motifs of hunting in the South is the hunter's quest for plentiful game.
Description: "A widely recognized symbol, both at the time and in legend, of the antebellum slaveholding class's aristocratic pretensions, the hunt is obviously deserving of study. In Bathed in Blood, however, Nicolas Proctor makes an excellent case for the cultural and social significance of hunting for all classes and races of antebellum Southern men. He effectively demonstrates that the pursuit of game lay at the confluence of almost all of the key signifiers of masculinity in both white and black culture. Proctor's is the most detailed account and sustained analysis we have of hunting in the Old South. It involves a sophisticated (but, mercifully, mostly jargon-free) cultural analysis of a rich body of literature surrounding the hunt--sporting journal articles, travel accounts, private diaries and correspondence, WPA slave narratives, etc. But this is also a social, and especially in the first chapter an environmental, history of this subject. Proctor lays out the mechanics as well as the meaning of the hunt. In his pursuit of the forms, he never loses sight of the more utilitarian benefits of the hunt--meat and hides. While elite hunters who stressed the ideal rules of sport disdained 'pothunters' (those who hunted for subsistence), the tangible fruits of the hunt were far from irrelevant in their display of mastery. Throughout his account, Proctor carefully distinguishes between the ideal and the real, and pays them both due attention."--From a review on H-Net.