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Record Nr.

UNINA9910459335503321

Autore

Best Stephen Michael

Titolo

The fugitive's properties [[electronic resource] ] : law and the poetics of possession / / Stephen M. Best

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, c2004

ISBN

1-282-58469-3

9786612584695

0-226-24111-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (375 p.)

Disciplina

810.9/3552

Soggetti

American literature - 19th century - History and criticism

Slavery in literature

Fugitive slaves - Legal status, laws, etc - United States

Law and literature - History - 19th century

African Americans in literature

Fugitive slaves in literature

Property in literature

Race in literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 277-351) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Debts -- Introduction: The Slave's Two Bodies -- Pro Bono Publico: Chapter Two. The Fugitive's Properties: Uncle Tom's Incalculable Dividend -- Sine Qua Non: Chapter Three. Counterfactuals, Causation, and the Tenses of "Separate but Equal" -- Conclusion: The Rules of the Game -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

In this study of literature and law before and since the Civil War, Stephen M. Best shows how American conceptions of slavery, property, and the idea of the fugitive were profoundly interconnected. The Fugitive's Properties uncovers a poetics of intangible, personified property emerging out of antebellum laws, circulating through key nineteenth-century works of literature, and informing cultural forms



such as blackface minstrelsy and early race films. Best also argues that legal principles dealing with fugitives and indebted persons provided a sophisticated precursor to intellectual property law as it dealt with rights in appearance, expression, and other abstract aspects of personhood. In this conception of property as fleeting, indeed fugitive, American law preserved for much of the rest of the century slavery's most pressing legal imperative: the production of personhood as a market commodity. By revealing the paradoxes of this relationship between fugitive slave law and intellectual property law, Best helps us to understand how race achieved much of its force in the American cultural imagination. A work of ambitious scope and compelling cross-connections, The Fugitive's Properties sets new agendas for scholars of American literature and legal culture.