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  • Early-19th-Century Literature
  • Michael L. Burduck

While this year's scholarship continues the recent trend of highlighting cultural issues, individual authors once again attract the attention of commentators. Not surprisingly Edgar Allan Poe remains a popular subject, and several important publications, including a splendid new edition of his collected letters, offer fresh perspectives on his works. In addition, new biographies of Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant shed light on two of the century's most popular literary men. James Fenimore Cooper's use of ethnicity provides the focal point for a study on race in the period's literature, and a number of works on Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Jacobs show that slavery remains a topic of lively critical discussion. Several studies continue the recent tendency to explicate the political, social, or religious contexts at work in the period's writings. African American writers and their contributions to the nation's literature inform some of the more thought-provoking of these studies. Two essays provide insights on 19th-century sea narratives and their role in helping the nation develop its own unique literary heritage. One article offers perspectives on the growth of Roman Catholicism in the 19th century and the presence of Catholicism in the nation's print culture, and another discusses the importance of 19th-century journalism on antebellum literature. Focusing on the period's poetry, an important collection traces the influence of transatlantic culture on the growth of American poetry. [End Page 233]

i Period Studies

Christine Levecq, Slavery and Sentiment: The Politics of Feeling in Black Atlantic Antislavery Writing 1770–1850 (New England), posits that anglo-phone literature about slavery stressed the importance of emotion and that consequently many black writers emphasized the power of feeling and its role in expressing a political vision. Engaged with the literatures and ideologies of their times, black writers, according to Levecq, used sentiment to promote a unique vision of American society. Emphasizing that Black Atlantic writers were men and women of their times, she notes that black writers proved well read and knowledgeable about American and international cultural and political events. She also identifies thematic and argumentative connections between black and white texts of the period. One of the important distinctions made early in her book illustrates the difference between "liberalism" and "republicanism," two worldviews resulting from appeals to feeling. Whereas liberalism stresses isolation, individuality, and natural rights, republicanism (which best describes the ethic of abolitionists and their interest in the common good) focuses more on the communal aspects of life. Basing her study on the opposition of these notions, Levecq remarks that American culture became more liberal and individualistic in comparison with other cultures. Her book analyzes the liberal and republican faces of sentiment in antislavery writings up to 1850 and shows how major antebellum authors of slave narratives such as Frederick Douglass and Mary Prince employed a radicalism shaped both by elements of their own national culture and by a marked cosmopolitan outlook. Levecq argues that the divergent political ideologies of liberalism and republicanism played a pivotal role in shaping people's sentiment about those who were suffering and enslaved. Examining writings from both sides of the Atlantic, the book chronologically analyzes how various authors brought race to the attention of the broader reading public. In her fascinating survey of the period's views on race, Levecq presents a valuable study on the nature of race relations and the importance of placing black texts of the period within their wider cultural and political contexts.

In Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760–1835 (Georgia) Cedrick May focuses on the role of early African American Christianity and its influence on the formation of American religion and politics. Seeing religion as the first institution to allow slaves to organize against oppressive forces, May asserts that Christianity gave slaves a sense of [End Page 234] common identity and purpose that eventually led to organization and collective action. The book explores the initial widespread and organized intellectual movement among African Americans and also comments on the overtly political nature of black institution-building and how it helped create a liberal shift in mainstream Christianity and liberal...

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