LEADER 04202nam 2200709 a 450 001 9910788669403321 005 20211005013029.0 010 $a1-283-89117-4 010 $a0-8122-0519-7 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812205190 035 $a(CKB)3240000000065364 035 $a(OCoLC)822017777 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebrary10642674 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000631114 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11392504 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000631114 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10591859 035 $a(PQKB)11590004 035 $a(OCoLC)793012719 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse17968 035 $a(DE-B1597)449497 035 $a(OCoLC)979580921 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812205190 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3441922 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10642674 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL420367 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3441922 035 $a(EXLCZ)993240000000065364 100 $a20110720d2012 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcn||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 14$aThe fabrication of American literature$b[electronic resource] $efraudulence and antebellum print culture /$fLara Langer Cohen 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aPhiladelphia $cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press$dc2012 215 $a1 online resource (252 p.) 225 0 $aMaterial Texts 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 0 $a0-8122-4369-2 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tIntroduction. American Literary Fraudulence --$tChapter 1. ''One Vast Perambulating Humbug'': Literary Nationalism and the Rise of the Puffing System --$tChapter 2. Backwoods and Blackface: The Strange Careers of Davy Crockett and Jim Crow --$tChapter 3. ''Slavery Never Can Be Represented'': James Williams and the Racial Politics of Imposture --$tChapter 4. Mediums of Exchange: Fanny Fern's Unoriginality --$tConclusion. The Confidence Man on a Large Scale --$tNotes --$tWorks Cited --$tIndex --$tAcknowledgments 330 $aLiterary histories typically celebrate the antebellum period as marking the triumphant emergence of American literature. But the period's readers and writers tell a different story: they derided literature as a fraud, an imposture, and a humbug, and they likened it to inflated currency, land bubbles, and quack medicine. Excavating a rich archive of magazine fiction, verse satires, comic almanacs, false slave narratives, minstrel song sheets, and early literary criticism, and revisiting such familiar figures as Edgar Allan Poe, Davy Crockett, Fanny Fern, and Herman Melville, Lara Langer Cohen uncovers the controversies over literary fraudulence that plagued these years and uses them to offer an ambitious rethinking of the antebellum print explosion. She traces the checkered fortunes of American literature from the rise of literary nationalism, which was beset by accusations of puffery, to the conversion of fraudulence from a national dilemma into a sorting mechanism that produced new racial, regional, and gender identities. Yet she also shows that even as fraudulence became a sign of marginality, some authors managed to turn their dubious reputations to account, making a virtue of their counterfeit status. This forgotten history, Cohen argues, presents a dramatically altered picture of American literature's role in antebellum culture, one in which its authority is far from assured, and its failures matter as much as its achievements. 410 0$aMaterial texts. 606 $aAmerican literature$y1783-1850$xHistory and criticism 606 $aTruthfulness and falsehood in literature 606 $aFraud in literature 610 $aCultural Studies. 610 $aLiterature. 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aTruthfulness and falsehood in literature. 615 0$aFraud in literature. 676 $a810.9/003 700 $aCohen$b Lara Langer$01516213 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910788669403321 996 $aThe fabrication of American literature$93752540 997 $aUNINA