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  3. Slavery, Philosophy, and American Literature, 1830–1860
  • Cited by 39
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    • Publisher:
      Cambridge University Press
      Publication date:
      22 September 2009
      17 June 2005
      ISBN:
      9780511485572
      9780521846530
      9780521152686
      DOI:
      https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511485572
      Dimensions:
      (228 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.503kg, 232 Pages
      Dimensions:
      (229 x 152 mm)
      Weight & Pages:
      0.35kg, 232 Pages
      • Series:
      Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture (148)
      Subjects:
      Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory
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    • Selected: Digital
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    Series:
    Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture (148)
    Subjects:
    Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory
    Information

    Book description

    Examining the literature of slavery and race before the Civil War, Maurice Lee, in this 2005 book, demonstrates how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus and the limits of rational authority. Poe, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, and Emerson were among the antebellum authors who tried - and failed - to find rational solutions to the slavery conflict. Unable to mediate the slavery controversy as the nation moved toward war, their writings form an uneasy transition between the confident rationalism of the American Enlightenment and the more skeptical thought of the pragmatists. Lee draws on antebellum moral philosophy, political theory, and metaphysics, bringing a different perspective to the literature of slavery - one that synthesizes cultural studies and intellectual history to argue that romantic, sentimental, and black Atlantic writers all struggled with modernity when facing the slavery crisis.

    Reviews

    Review of the hardback:'… a thought-provoking attempt to integrate antebellum literature into an American intellectual history from American Enlightenment to postbellum pragmatism.'

    Source: Journal of American Studies

    Review of the hardback:'The chapters on Poe and Stowe dazzle most … Lee's knowledge of philosophy and literature is broad, deep, and in constant service; his prose ripples with instructive allusions near and far.'

    Source: Literature and History

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