1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910827768203321

Autore

Hebard Andrew

Titolo

The poetics of sovereignty in American literature, 1885-1910 / / Andrew Hebard, Miami University of Ohio [[electronic resource]]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge : , : Cambridge University Press, , 2013

ISBN

1-107-23692-4

1-139-85423-2

1-139-23564-8

1-139-84515-2

1-139-84041-X

1-139-84279-X

1-139-84602-7

1-283-74665-4

1-139-84160-2

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 204 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Collana

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; ; 165

Disciplina

810.9/004

Soggetti

American literature - 19th century - History and criticism

American literature - 20th century - History and criticism

Sovereignty in literature

Literature and society - United States - History - 19th century

Literature and society - United States - History - 20th century

Law and literature - United States - History - 19th century

Law and literature - United States - History - 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: 'an empire of letters' -- 'Like a disembodied shade': popular romances and the American imperial state -- Styling territory: Mark Twain and the 'stupendous joke' of imperial sovereignty -- 'Twisted from the ordinary': naturalism, sovereignty, and the conventions of Chinese exclusion -- Acts of lawless discretion: Westerns and the Plenary Administration of Native Americans -- Romance and riot: Charles Chesnutt and the conventions of extralegal violence in the Jim Crow South.



Sommario/riassunto

During the Progressive Era, the United States regularly suspended its own laws to regulate racialized populations. Judges and administrators relied on the rhetoric of sovereignty to justify such legal practices, while in American popular culture, sovereignty helped authors coin tropes that have become synonymous with American exceptionalism today. In this book, Andrew Hebard challenges the notion of sovereignty as a 'state of exception' in American jurisprudence and literature at the turn of the twentieth century. Hebard explores how literary trends such as romance and realism helped conventionalize, and thereby sanction, the federal government's use of sovereignty in a range of foreign and domestic policy matters, including the regulation of overseas colonies, immigration, Native American lands, and extra-legal violence in the American South. Weaving historiography with close readings of Mark Twain, the Western, and other hallmarks of Progressive Era literature, Hebard's study offers a new cultural context for understanding the legal history of race relations in the United States.