Politics and Skepticism in Antebellum American Literature

Politics and Skepticism in Antebellum American Literature
Author: Dominic Mastroianni
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: History
ISBN: 110707617X

This volume explores the way in which antebellum American writers perceived the political implications of modern philosophical skepticism. Dominic Mastroianni offers new readings of six major American authors - Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Douglass and Jacobs - and illumines their thinking about revolution, civil war, and the world's susceptibility to transformation.

Black Abolitionists in Ireland

Black Abolitionists in Ireland
Author: Christine Kinealy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2024-03-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1003859925

Building on the narratives explored in volume one, this publication recovers the story of a further seven Black visitors to Ireland in the decades prior to the American Civil War. This volume examines each of these seven activists and artists, and how their unique and diverse talents contributed to the movement to abolish enslavement and to the demand for Black equality. In an era that witnessed the rise of minstrelsy, they provided a powerful counter argument to the lie of Black inferiority. Moreover, their interactions with Irish abolitionists helped to build a strong transatlantic movement that had a global reach and impact. The lives explored are: Ira Aldridge (the African Roscius), William Henry Lane (Master Juba), William P. Powell, Elizabeth Greenfield (the Black Swan), Reuben Nixon, James Watkins and William H. Day. Individually and collectively they demonstrated the agency and power of Black involvement in the search for social justice. This book will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in modern European history and social and cultural history.