Title: Democracy's spectacle
Description: "Drawing on Alexis de Tocqueville's analysis of the sovereignty of the people in Democracy in America, along with work by Gustave de Beaumont, Lydia Maria Child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, Greiman tracks the crises of sovereign power as it migrates out of the state to become a constitutive feature of the public sphere. Greiman brings together literature and political theory, as well as materials on antebellum performance culture, antislavery activism, and penitentiary reform, to argue that the antebellum public sphere, transformed by its empowerment, emerges as a spectacle with investments in both punishment and entertainment."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: Democracy in literature, Politics and literature, Literature and society, Democracy, History and criticism, American literature, Sovereignty in literature, Psychological aspects, History, American literature, history and criticism, 19th century
Places: United States
Time periods: 19th century