Early-19th-Century Literature

While a number of this year's scholarly works address broader cultural issues, the majority of commentators focus their critical inquiries on individual authors. Curiously, the number of noteworthy book-length studies seems to have declined slightly in all areas covered by this chapter, although a few books merit attention. The period's popular entertainment and religious views serve as topics for some of the more intriguing scholarly glances into the era's literary marketplace. Once again Edgar Allan Poe figures prominently: in addition to several useful articles, a splendid book offers fresh perspectives on Poe as seen through the impressions of his contemporaries. Continuing a noticeable trend evident in recent years, a number of scholars discuss the works of James Fenimore Cooper from various perspectives, and the second volume of a recently founded annual helps call our attention not only to Cooper but also to other writers prominent at the time. Not surprisingly, African American writers draw the attention of numerous commentators. One book-length study offers valuable insight into the Native American presence in New England, while a few articles offer perspectives on a number of issues relating to the period's important Indian literature. Scholars examine a number of prominent literary women, among them Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fanny Fern, Lydia Maria Child, Sarah Hale, and Susan Fenimore Cooper, and an intriguing article discusses how one of the period's literary magazines sheds important light on the lives of women factory workers. A number of important book-length projects on William Gilmore Simms reveal that critics have not lost interest in this important Southern writer. An edited collection of Southern frontier humor demonstrates how the humorists of the Old South played a prominent role in helping the nation develop its own unique literary voice.

i Period Studies

Robert Nowatzki's Representing African Americans in Transatlantic Abolitionism and Blackface Minstrelsy (LSU) examines the overlap of the Jim Crow and Uncle Tom stereotypes applied to African Americans— the conflicts between them and the ideological sympathies inherent in them—present in some of the period's literary and nonliterary texts, including fiction, poetry, slave narratives, travel literature, and minstrel lyrics. Focusing on the period from the 1830s to the abolition of slavery in the United States, Nowatzki posits that depictions of African Americans and slavery "were significantly shaped . . . by ideologies of class, race, and nation in the United States and the United Kingdom." Abolitionism and minstrelsy often portrayed conflicting images: abolitionists presented slaves as mistreated human beings, while minstrel shows deemphasized human characteristics, seldom offering a serious view of blacks as intelligent or courageous. These differences aside, Nowatzki examines the common ground between abolitionism and minstrelsy, particularly their "fascination with black people and especially black bodies." In fact, each movement borrowed rhetoric and imagery from the other. For example, abolitionism took a cue from the period's popular minstrel shows and placed black people on the stage to lecture, sing, and recount their experiences as slaves. By doing so abolitionism made itself more visible and more entertaining. Similarly, minstrel shows, always known for eliciting laughter, also incorporated antislavery feeling as they frequently addressed the separation of slave families and other indignities caused by slavery. As Nowatzki ably demonstrates, minstrelsy and abolitionism "were not always dichotomous but were complementary." Whereas most scholarly works on these subjects focus on either one or the other, Nowatzki's book studies both and reveals how they coexisted and shaped each other, often touching on other topics of the time, including gender, capitalism, nationalism, and workers rights.

In Slavery, Civil War, and Salvation: African American Slaves and Christianity, 1830-1870 (LSU) Daniel L. Fountain discusses "the degree of Christianity" evident in the African American community. Fountain takes issue with the notion that after 1830 "Afro-Christianity was the cultural centerpiece of the southern slave community." In fact, a surprisingly small number of slaves converted to Christianity prior to emancipation; Afro-Christianity dominated the African American religious landscape only after emancipation brought freedom. Advancing his "speculative interpretation," Fountain urges scholars to revisit the topic of African American religious history. Indeed, he believes Christianity may not...