BUCH
With a Barbarous Din
Race and Ethnic Encounter in Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Literature
American Studies – A Monograph Series, Bd. 266
2016
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Abstract
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 Joaqín 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.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
| Zwischenüberschrift | Seite | Aktion | Preis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | C | ||
| Title Page | 3 | ||
| Copyright | 4 | ||
| Acknowledgments | 7 | ||
| Contents | 9 | ||
| List of Figures | 11 | ||
| FIGURE 1, Louis Agassiz’ “Tableau” from his “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man.” in Types of Mankind (lxxvi) | 26 | ||
| FIGURE 2, Frontispiece from Frederick Douglass’ My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) | 102 | ||
| FIGURE 3 “Head of Rameses” from Prichard’s The Natural History of Man (1843) | 104 | ||
| FIGURE 4, “Ramses II, The Great” from Types of Mankind (148) | 105 | ||
| FIGURE 5, Full page with the frontispiece of the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass (above) and detail (left) | 170 | ||
| FIGURE 6, Map illustrating Louis Agassiz’ geography of races in his “Sketch of the Natural Provinces of the Animal World and Their Relation to the Different Types of Man” in Types of Makind | 174 | ||
| FIGURE 7, Parallel illustrations from Joaquín Murieta showing the two central antagonists | 216 | ||
| Introduction | 13 | ||
| Shades of White and Other Discursive Pitfalls | 14 | ||
| Beyond Immigration | 23 | ||
| Reading Ahistorically | 29 | ||
| 1 With a Barbarous Din: Ethnic Triangulations | 43 | ||
| 1.1 Reading “Benito Cereno | 44 | ||
| 1.2 Ethnicity: The Challenge of Unknowable Strangeness | 54 | ||
| 1.3 Race: The Challenge of Epistemological Certainty | 60 | ||
| 1.4 Juxtapositions | 70 | ||
| 2 The Power of Citation: Consent and Descent | 83 | ||
| 2.1 Reading My Bondage and My Freedom | 84 | ||
| 2.2 The Body of the Mother in a Web of Citations | 91 | ||
| 2.3 Peerage, Paternity, and Patriarchal Naming: Scottish Douglass | 103 | ||
| 2.4 Citing the Self on the Threshold of Frontispiece and Introduction | 110 | ||
| 3 Reading Crosswise: Race, Ethnicity, and the Bible | 121 | ||
| 3.1 Reading Dred | 122 | ||
| 3.2 Epigraphic Disguise: Framing the Narrator | 129 | ||
| 3.3 Singing as Reading and Code | 135 | ||
| 3.4 Transcultural Otherness in the Act of Reading | 143 | ||
| 4 Barbaric Yawp over the Roofs of the World | 157 | ||
| 4.1 Reading Leaves of Grass | 158 | ||
| 4.2 Visualizing Race, Gesturing Ethnicity: Frontispiece and Preface | 164 | ||
| 4.3 A Uniform Hieroglyphic | 171 | ||
| 4.4 Slavery and Racial Ambivalence | 179 | ||
| 4.5 The Rhythm of “Black” and “White | 188 | ||
| 5 Raised to the Power of Three: Voices of Revolt | 197 | ||
| 5.1 Reading Joaquín Murieta | 199 | ||
| 5.2 Transcultural Space and the Racial Binary | 204 | ||
| 5.3 Triangulations: Shifting Perspectives | 212 | ||
| 5.4 Triptychs Unfolding: Violence, Voice, and Narration | 221 | ||
| Conclusion: Becoming Alien | 237 | ||
| Works Cited | 245 | ||
| Index | 265 |
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