Revised Lives: Whitman, Religion, and Constructions of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Culture

by William Pannapacker

Overview

Revised Lives examines self-representation in U.S. culture from the American Revolution through the nineteenth century. Drawing on studies of the history of the book, Pierre Bourdieu's sociology, and ethnic and gender revisionism, this book focuses on the processes of national development, the self-construction of authorial personae, and the appropriation of the personae by interpretive communities. Special emphasis is given to Walt Whitman, but other figures are treated at length: P. T. Barnum, Edward Carpenter, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, and Edgar Allan Poe. This study contributes to the understanding of selfhood in nineteenth-century American culture, the development of autobiography as a genre, and the dynamics of literary reception.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781135924508
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/15/2004
Series:	Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	218
File size:	956 KB

About the Author

William Pannapacker is Assistant Professor of English and Towsley Research Scholar at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He holds an A.M. in English and a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Harvard University, and is the author of numerous articles on nineteenth-century American literature and culture.

Table of Contents

1. Revised Lives: Self-Refashioning and Nineteenth-Century American Autobiography 2. Politics, Poetics, and Self-Promotion: Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln 3. "He Not Only Objected to My Book, He Objected to Me": Walt Whitman, James Russell Lowell, and the Rhetoric of Exclusion 4. "What Is a Man Anyhow?": Whitmanites, Wildeans, and Working-Class Comradeship 5. Visual Images and the Nineteenth-Century Construction of Edgar Allan Poe