Standards of value [[electronic resource] ] : money, race, and literature in America / / by Michael Germana

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910792341103321
• Autore: Germana Michael <1971->
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Iowa City, : University of Iowa Press, c2009
• ISBN: 1-58729-893-7
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (204 p.)
• Disciplina: 813/.009/355
• Soggetti: American fiction - 19th century - History and criticism; Money in literature; Race in literature; American fiction - 20th century - History and criticism
• 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. [157]-184) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Jacksonian abolitionism: money, minstrelsy, and "Uncle Tom's cabin" -- Real change: George Washington Cable's "The grandissimes" and the crime of '73 -- The gold standard of the passing novel: exploring the limits of strategic essentialism -- Black is-- an' Black ain't: "Invisible man" and the fiat of race.
• Sommario/riassunto: In Standards of Value, Michael Germana reveals how tectonic shifts in U.S. monetary policy-from the Coinage Act of 1834 to the abolition of the domestic gold standard in 1933-34,correspond to strategic changes by American writers who renegotiated the value of racial difference. Populating the pages of this bold and innovative study are authors as varied as Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Washington Cable, Charles Chesnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, and Ralph Ellison, all of whom drew analogies between the form Americans thought the nation's money should take and t