In this Book
University of Minnesota Press
- Abolition’s Public Sphere
- Book
- 2003
- Published by: University of Minnesota Press
summary
Echoes of Thomas Paine and Enlightenment thought resonate throughout the abolitionist movement and in the efforts of its leaders to create an antislavery reading public. In Abolition’s Public Sphere Robert Fanuzzi critically examines the writings of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and their massive abolition publicity campaign—pamphlets, newspapers, petitions, and public gatherings—geared to an audience of white male citizens, free black noncitizens, women, and the enslaved. Including provocative readings of Thoreau’s Walden and of the symbolic space of Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Abolition’s Public Sphere demonstrates how abolitionist public discourse sought to reenact eighteenth-century scenarios of revolution and democracy in the antebellum era.
Fanuzzi illustrates how the dissemination of abolitionist tracts served to create an “imaginary public” that promoted and provoked the discussion of slavery. However, by embracing Enlightenment abstractions of liberty, reason, and progress, Fanuzzi argues, abolitionist strategy introduced aesthetic concerns that challenged political institutions of the public sphere and prevailing notions of citizenship. Insightful and thought-provoking, Abolition’s Public Sphere questions standard versions of abolitionist history and, in the process, our understanding of democracy itself.
Fanuzzi illustrates how the dissemination of abolitionist tracts served to create an “imaginary public” that promoted and provoked the discussion of slavery. However, by embracing Enlightenment abstractions of liberty, reason, and progress, Fanuzzi argues, abolitionist strategy introduced aesthetic concerns that challenged political institutions of the public sphere and prevailing notions of citizenship. Insightful and thought-provoking, Abolition’s Public Sphere questions standard versions of abolitionist history and, in the process, our understanding of democracy itself.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-iv
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-ix
- 1. The Sedition of Nonresistance
- pp. 1-42
- 2. Garrisonism and the Public Sphere
- pp. 43-82
- 3. Frederick Douglass’s Public Body
- pp. 83-128
- 5. Thoreau’s Civic Imagination
- pp. 167-203
- 6. Douglass’s Sublime: The Art of the Slave
- pp. 205-250
- Conclusion: A Cosmopolitan Point of View
- pp. 251-260
Additional Information
ISBN
9780816694471
Related ISBN(s)
9780816640904
MARC Record
OCLC
191938931
Pages
376
Launched on MUSE
2015-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No