Transatlantic spectacles of race [[electronic resource] ] : the tragic mulatta and the tragic muse / / Kimberly Snyder Manganelli

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910792095903321
• Autore: Manganelli Kimberly Snyder
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New Brunswick, N.J., : Rutgers University Press, c2012
• ISBN: 1-283-59207-X; 9786613904522; 0-8135-4991-4
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource
• Collana: The American Literatures Initiative
• Disciplina: 809/.933522
• Soggetti: Racially mixed women in literature; Tragic, The, in literature; Race in literature; Jewish women in literature
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: "A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI).
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: "I Thought That to Seem Was to Be": Spectacles of Race in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Imaginary -- 1. "Stamped and Molded by Pleasure": The Transnational Mulatta in Jamaica and Saint-Domingue -- 2. "Fascinating Allurements of Gold": New Orleans's "Copper-Colored Nymphs" and the Tragic Mulatta -- 3. "Oh Heavens! What Am I?": The Tragic Mulatta as Sensation Heroine -- 4. "I Wonder What Market He Means That Daughter For": The Beautiful Jewess and the Tragic Muse -- 5. "After All, Living Is but to Play a Part": The Tragic Mulatta Plays the Tragic Muse -- Conclusion: "I Know What I Am": Race and the Triumphant "New Woman" -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author
• Sommario/riassunto: The tragic mulatta was a stock figure in nineteenth-century American literature, an attractive mixed-race woman who became a casualty of the color line. The tragic muse was an equally familiar figure in Victorian British culture, an exotic and alluring Jewish actress whose profession placed her alongside the "fallen woman." In Transatlantic Spectacles of Race, Kimberly Manganelli argues that the tragic mulatta ; and tragic muse, who have heretofore been read separately, must be understood as two sides of the same phenomenon. In both cases, the eroticized and racialized female body is put on public display, as a highly enticing commodity in the nineteenth-century marketplace. Tracing these figures through American, British, and French literature and culture, Manganelli constructs a host of surprising literary genealogies, from Zelica to Daniel Deronda, from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Lady Audley's Secret. Bringing together an impressive array of cultural texts that includes novels, melodramas, travel narratives, diaries, and illustrations, Transatlantic Spectacles of Race reveals the value of transcending literary, national, and racial boundaries.