Loyal Subjects
288 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
8 illustrations.
Paperback
Release Date:19 Aug 2010
ISBN:9780813547817
Hardcover
Release Date:19 Aug 2010
ISBN:9780813547800
Loyal Subjects
Bonds of Nation, Race, and Allegiance in Nineteenth-Century America
Rutgers University Press
When one nation becomes two, or when two nations become one, what does national affiliation mean or require? Elizabeth Duquette answers this question by demonstrating how loyalty was used during the U.S. Civil War to define proper allegiance to the Union. For Northerners during the war, and individuals throughout the nation after Appomattox, loyalty affected the construction of national identity, moral authority, and racial characteristics.
Loyal Subjects considers how the Civil War complicated the cultural value of emotion, especially the ideal of sympathy. Through an analysis of literary works written during and after the conflict-from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Chiefly About War Matters" through Henry James's The Bostonians and Charles Chestnutt's "The Wife of His Youth," to the Pledge of Allegiance and W.E.B. Du Bois's John Brown, among many others-Duquette reveals that although American literary criticism has tended to dismiss the Civil War's impact, postwar literature was profoundly shaped by loyalty.
Loyal Subjects considers how the Civil War complicated the cultural value of emotion, especially the ideal of sympathy. Through an analysis of literary works written during and after the conflict-from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Chiefly About War Matters" through Henry James's The Bostonians and Charles Chestnutt's "The Wife of His Youth," to the Pledge of Allegiance and W.E.B. Du Bois's John Brown, among many others-Duquette reveals that although American literary criticism has tended to dismiss the Civil War's impact, postwar literature was profoundly shaped by loyalty.
Loyal Subjects illuminates our understanding of sympathy, civic life, and literary production around and after the Civil War. By taking up the concept of loyalty as distinctive from sentiment and sympathy, Duquette makes a powerful case for the Civil War as a rich locus of narrative meaning.
Duquette has written a compelling, well-researched study of how literary texts 'defined, disseminated, and resisted' loyalty during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Recommended.
A provocative literary rendering of the idea of loyalty during the Civil War era.
Loyal Subjects illuminates our understanding of sympathy, civic life, and literary production around and after the Civil War. By taking up the concept of loyalty as distinctive from sentiment and sympathy, Duquette makes a powerful case for the Civil War as a rich locus of narrative meaning.
Duquette has written a compelling, well-researched study of how literary texts 'defined, disseminated, and resisted' loyalty during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. Recommended.
A provocative literary rendering of the idea of loyalty during the Civil War era.
ELIZABETH DUQUETTE is an associate professor of English at Gettysburg College. She has previously published articles with a focus on philosophy and nineteenth-century American literature.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Pledging Allegiance
1. Loyalty, Oaths, and the Nation
2. One Big Happy Family, Again?
3. Pledging Allegiance in Henry James
4. Loyalty's Slaves
5. Philosophies of Loyalty
Afterword
Notes
Index
Introduction: Pledging Allegiance
1. Loyalty, Oaths, and the Nation
2. One Big Happy Family, Again?
3. Pledging Allegiance in Henry James
4. Loyalty's Slaves
5. Philosophies of Loyalty
Afterword
Notes
Index
