Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
Book Cover
Bestseller
BestsellerE-Book
Author Raimon, Eve Allegra, 1957- author.

Title The "tragic mulatta" revisited : race and nationalism in nineteenth-century antislavery fiction / Eve Allegra Raimon.

Publication Info. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, [2004]
©2004

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Rocky Hill - Downloadable Materials  EBSCO Ebook    Downloadable
Rocky Hill cardholders click here to access this title from EBSCO
Description 1 online resource (x, 202 pages)
data file rda
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-189) and index.
Note Print version record.
Contents Introduction : reading miscegenation -- 1. Of romances and republics in Lydia Maria Child's miscegenation fiction -- 2. Revising the "quadroon narrative" in William Wells Brown's Clotel -- 3. Resistant Cassys in Richard Hildreth's The slave and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin -- 4. Public poor relief and national belonging in Harriet Wilson's Our nig -- Coda : the "tragic mulatta" then and now.
Summary Annotation Since its inception, the United States has been intensely preoccupied with interracialism. The concept is embedded everywhere in our social and political fabric, including our sense of national identity. And yet, in both its quantitative and symbolic forms, interracialism remains an extremely elusive phenomenon, causing policy makers and census boards to wrangle over how to delineate it and, on an emblematic level, stirring intense emotions from fear to fascination. In The "Tragic Mulatta" Revisited, Eve Allegra Raimon focuses on the mixed-race female slave in literature, arguing that this figure became a symbolic vehicle for explorations of race and nation-both of which were in crisis in the mid-nineteenth century. At this time, judicial, statutory, social, and scientific debates about the meaning of racial difference (and intermixture) coincided with disputes over frontier expansion, which were never merely about land acquisition but also literally about the "complexion" of that frontier. Embodying both northern and southern ideologies, the "amalgamated" mulatta, the author argues, can be viewed as quintessentially American, a precursor to contemporary motifs of "hybrid" and "mestizo" identities. Where others have focused on the gendered and racially abject position of the "tragic mulatta," Raimon reconsiders texts by such central antislavery writers as Lydia Maria Child, William Wells Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Wilson to suggest that the figure is more usefully examined as a way of understanding the volatile and shifting interface of race and national identity in the antebellum period.
Subject American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
Race in literature.
Nationalism and literature -- United States -- History -- 19th century.
African American women in literature.
Antislavery movements in literature.
Racially mixed people in literature.
Tragic, The, in literature.
Nationalism in literature.
Slavery in literature.
Women in literature.
LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
African American women in literature. (OCoLC)fst00799498
American fiction. (OCoLC)fst00807048
Antislavery movements in literature. (OCoLC)fst00810811
Nationalism and literature. (OCoLC)fst01033884
Nationalism in literature. (OCoLC)fst01033899
Race in literature. (OCoLC)fst01086506
Racially mixed people in literature. (OCoLC)fst01086603
Slavery in literature. (OCoLC)fst01120515
Tragic, The, in literature. (OCoLC)fst01154372
Women in literature. (OCoLC)fst01177912
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Nationalbewusstsein Motiv.
Literatur.
Sklaverei Motiv.
Rassenfrage Motiv.
United States.
Chronological Term 1800-1899
Genre/Form Electronic books.
Criticism, interpretation, etc. (OCoLC)fst01411635
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Other Form: Print version: Raimon, Eve Allegra, 1957- "Tragic mulatta" revisited. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, ©2004 081353481X 0813534828 (DLC) 2004000308 (OCoLC)54046321
ISBN 0813537118 (electronic book)
9780813537115 (electronic book)
-->
Add a Review