1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910798242903321

Autore

Miller Mark Joseph <1975->

Titolo

Cast down : abjection in America, 1700-1850 / / Mark J. Miller

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : , : University of Pennsylvania Press, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

0-8122-9264-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (232 pages)

Collana

Early American Studies

Disciplina

303.4

Soggetti

Suffering - Religious aspects - United States - History

Suffering - Social aspects - United States - History

Race awareness - United States - History

United States Church history 18th century

United States Church history 19th century

United States

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Introduction. From Roses to Neuroses -- Chapter 1. Conversion, Suffering, and Publicity -- Chapter 2. Indian Abjection in the Public Sphere -- Chapter 3. The Martyrology of White Abolitionists -- Chapter 4. Masochism, Minstrelsy, and Liberal Revolution -- Epilogue. Child Pets, Melville's Pip, and Oriental Blackness -- Notes -- Index -- Acknowledgments

Sommario/riassunto

Derived from the Latin abiectus, literally meaning "thrown or cast down," "abjection" names the condition of being servile, wretched, or contemptible. In Western religious tradition, to be abject is to submit to bodily suffering or psychological mortification for the good of the soul. In Cast Down: Abjection in America, 1700-1850, Mark J. Miller argues that transatlantic Protestant discourses of abjection engaged with, and furthered the development of, concepts of race and sexuality in the creation of public subjects and public spheres. Miller traces the connection between sentiment, suffering, and publication and the role it played in the movement away from church-based social reform and toward nonsectarian radical rhetoric in the public sphere. He focuses on two periods of rapid transformation: first, the 1730's and 1740's,



when new models of publication and transportation enabled transatlantic Protestant religious populism, and, second, the 1830's and 1840's, when liberal reform movements emerged from nonsectarian religious organizations. Analyzing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century conversion narratives, personal narratives, sectarian magazines, poems, and novels, Miller shows how church and social reformers used sensational accounts of abjection in their attempts to make the public sphere sacred as a vehicle for political change, especially the abolition of slavery.