| Description |
xiii, 315 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm |
| Note |
Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 273-300) and index. |
| Contents |
Alphabetical Order: The Genre of the Alphabet from the Christ-Cross Row to The New England Primer -- Icon and Ritual in the Crossrow: The Way of the Alphabet -- The Comenian Alphabet: What the Animals Said to Adam -- Letter/Image/Text in The New England Primer -- The Republic of ABC: Alphabetizing Americans, 1750-1850 -- Children and Images -- Children as Images -- Telling the Alphabet -- The Alphabet on Top -- "The Alphabet Turn'd Posture-Master": A Morphology of Alphabet Texts -- A Poetics of Alphabetization -- "That Mother's Kiss": The Alphabet, Gender, and Narrative -- Gender and the Alphabet -- The Space of the Alphabet -- Alphabetizing Things: The Narrating Woman -- The Technology of the Maternal: Alphabetical Order and Mother's Lips -- The Manns Among the Letters: Alphabet Plots -- WWW: The Wide, Wide World's Web -- A Renovated Crusoe -- Gender, Genre, and Replication in The Wide, Wide World -- Textual/Maternal/Commodity Networks -- Seeing Through Women -- Ellen as Emblem of Literacy -- "The Dividing Line": Alphabetic Realism, Narrative Authority, and the Erotics of Alphabetization -- The Story of A: Alphabetization in The Scarlet Letter -- The Importunate Letter -- A Priori: Hawthorne's Letter before The Letter -- Memories of Alphabetization in "The Custom-House" -- Allegory, Adultery, and Alphabetization -- "Behold a Spectacle of Blood": The Erotics of Alphabetization in The Scarlet Letter -- The Scarlet Letter as a Rite of Institution -- Epilogue: F, etc. |
| Summary |
"Illustrated with often antic images from alphabet books and primers, The Story of A relates the history of the alphabet as a genre of text for children and of alphabetization as a social practice in America, from early modern reading primers to the literature of the American Renaissance." "Offering a poetics of alphabetization and explicating the alphabet's tropes and rhetorical strategies, the author demonstrates the far-reaching cultural power of such apparently neutral statements as "A is for apple." The new market for children's books in the eighteenth century established for the "republic of ABC" a cultural potency equivalent to its high-culture counterpart, the "republic of letters," while shaping its child-readers into consumers. As a central rite of socialization, alphabetization schooled children to conflicting expectations, as well as to changing models of authority, understandings of the world, and uses of literature."--Jacket. |
| Subject |
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864. Scarlet letter.
|
|
New England primer.
|
|
English language -- Alphabet -- Study and teaching -- United States.
|
|
Alphabetizing -- United States -- History.
|
|
Literacy -- United States -- History.
|
|
Language arts -- United States.
|
|
United States -- Civilization.
|
|
New England primer. (OCoLC)fst01788155
|
|
Scarlet letter (Hawthorne, Nathaniel) (OCoLC)fst01356327
|
|
Alphabetizing. (OCoLC)fst00805968
|
|
Civilization. (OCoLC)fst00862898
|
|
English language -- Alphabet -- Study and teaching.
(OCoLC)fst00910948
|
|
Language arts. (OCoLC)fst00992284
|
|
Literacy. (OCoLC)fst00999859
|
|
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
|
|
Alphabetisierung (DE-588)4068576-7
|
|
Geschichte (DE-588)4020517-4
|
|
United States (DE-588)4078704-7
|
|
Hawthorne, Nathaniel.
|
|
Scarlet letter.
|
|
New England primer.
|
|
United States.
|
| Genre/Form |
History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
|
| ISBN |
0804731748 (alk. paper) |
|
9780804731744 (alk. paper) |
|
0804731756 |
|
9780804731751 |
|
