1st Edition
Urban Revelations Cities, Homes, and Other Ruins in American Literature, 1790-1860
By Donald J. McNutt
Copyright 2006
211 Pages
by
Routledge
216 Pages
by
Routledge
211 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This study reexamines the ethos of national progress by analyzing how American writers import images of ruins from European aesthetics to cast the city as a site of instability and cultural impermanence. While highlighting the transatlantic currency of ruin imagery, the study demonstrates through interdisciplinary analyses of architecture and material culture how American images of ruin intersect... Read more
Abstract Introduction Chapter 1: Framing the Indian: Children of the Forest on the Urban Scene New Cities, Savage Guests Fictions of Passing: Freneau's Tomo Cheeki Ruins in the Present: Peale and Clinton Chapter 2: The Idea of this Room: Houses and the Image of Fiction in Arthur Mervyn Signs of Secrecy Houses of Fiction Chapter 3: Urban Allegories: Poe's Tales and Eastern State Penitentiary Crowd Control: Solitary Confinement and the City Fictions of Confinement Confessions in Place Chapter 4: The City Behind the Masquerade of Fiction: Melville's The Confidence-Man A Ship and Its Detritus The Character of Geographical Fictions A Nation in Fragments Notes Works Cited
Biography
Donald J. McNutt
