The Myth of New Orleans in Literature

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780870497896
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (978 download)

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Book Synopsis The Myth of New Orleans in Literature by : Violet Harrington Bryan

Download or read book The Myth of New Orleans in Literature written by Violet Harrington Bryan and published by . This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many writers have appropriated the rich and varied rituals, attitudes, ceremonies, and language of New Orleans for various literary purposes. The culture can be read in the texts of George Washington Cable, Grace King, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Marcus Christian, Tennessee Williams, Tom Dent, and Brenda Marie Osbey. The idea of New Orleans as courtesan as well as the realization of the interdependence of the races in the city's music, art, architecture, religious worship, and community performance become legend in their works. Violet Bryan examines these literary appropriations and shows how writers from 1880 to the present have variously reflected a culture that registers complex patterns of race, gender, and class. Bryan examines the implicit and explicit connections between writers and their texts that compose the literary culture of New Orleans."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A Bloodless Victory

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421423030
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis A Bloodless Victory by : Joseph F. Stoltz

Download or read book A Bloodless Victory written by Joseph F. Stoltz and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-12-24 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of military historiography examines the changing narrative of the Battle of New Orleans through two centuries of commemoration. Once celebrated on par with the Fourth of July, the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans is no longer a day of reverence for most Americans. The United States’ stunning defeat of the British army on January 8th, 1815, gave rise to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the Democratic Party, and the legend of Jean Laffite. Yet the battle has not been a national holiday since 1861. Joseph F. Stoltz III explores how generations of Americans have consciously revised, reinterpreted, and reexamined the memory of the conflict to fit the cultural and social needs of their time. Combining archival research with deep analyses of music, literature, theater, and film across two centuries of American popular culture, Stoltz highlights the myriad ways in which politicians, artists, academics, and ordinary people have rewritten the battle’s history. From Andrew Jackson’s presidential campaign to the occupation of New Orleans by the Union Army to the Jim Crow era, the continuing reinterpretations of the battle alienated whole segments of the American population from its memorialization. Thus, a close look at the Battle of New Orleans offers an opportunity to explore not just how events are collectively remembered across generations but also how a society discards memorialization that is no longer necessary or palatable.

The Story of French New Orleans

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496804872
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis The Story of French New Orleans by : Dianne Guenin-Lelle

Download or read book The Story of French New Orleans written by Dianne Guenin-Lelle and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it about the city of New Orleans? History, location, and culture continue to link it to France while distancing it culturally and symbolically from the United States. This book explores the traces of French language, history, and artistic expression that have been present there over the last three hundred years. This volume focuses on the French, Spanish, and American colonial periods to understand the imprint that French socio-cultural dynamic left on the Crescent City. The migration of Acadians to New Orleans at the time the city became a Spanish dominion and the arrival of Haitian refugees when the city became an American territory oddly reinforced its Francophone identity. However, in the process of establishing itself as an urban space in the Antebellum South, the culture of New Orleans became a liability for New Orleans elite after the Louisiana Purchase. New Orleans and the Caribbean share numerous historical, cultural, and linguistic connections. The book analyzes these connections and the shared process of creolization occurring in New Orleans and throughout the Caribbean Basin. It suggests "French" New Orleans might be understood as a trope for unscripted "original" Creole social and cultural elements. Since being Creole came to connote African descent, the study suggests that an association with France in the minds of whites allowed for a less racially-bound and contested social order within the United States.

A.D.

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Publisher : Pantheon
ISBN 13 : 0307378144
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis A.D. by : Josh Neufeld

Download or read book A.D. written by Josh Neufeld and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2009 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the stories of seven survivors of Hurricane Katrina who tried to evacuate, protect their possessions, and save loved ones before, during, and after the flood.

Imagining the Creole City

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807158259
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Imagining the Creole City by : Rien Fertel

Download or read book Imagining the Creole City written by Rien Fertel and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early years of the nineteenth century, the burgeoning cultural pride of white Creoles in New Orleans intersected with America's golden age of print, to explosive effect. Imagining the Creole City reveals the profusion of literary output -- histories and novels, poetry and plays -- that white Creoles used to imagine themselves as a unified community of writers and readers. Rien Fertel argues that Charles Gayarré's English-language histories of Louisiana, which emphasized the state's dual connection to America and to France, provided the foundation of a white Creole print culture predicated on Louisiana's exceptionalism. The writings of authors like Grace King, Adrien Rouquette, and Alfred Mercier consciously fostered an image of Louisiana as a particular social space, and of themselves as the true inheritors of its history and culture. In turn, the forging of this white Creole identity created a close-knit community of cosmopolitan Creole elites, who reviewed each other's books, attended the same salons, crusaded against the popular fiction of George Washington Cable, and worked together to preserve the French language in local and state governmental institutions. Together they reimagined the definition of "Creole" and used it as a marker of status and power. By the end of this group's era of cultural prominence, Creole exceptionalism had become a cornerstone in the myth of Louisiana in general and of New Orleans in particular. In defining themselves, the authors in the white Creole print community also fashioned a literary identity that resonates even today.

The Seamstress of New Orleans

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Publisher : A John Scognamiglio Book
ISBN 13 : 1496738160
Total Pages : 355 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (967 download)

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Book Synopsis The Seamstress of New Orleans by : Diane C. McPhail

Download or read book The Seamstress of New Orleans written by Diane C. McPhail and published by A John Scognamiglio Book. This book was released on 2023-06-27 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set against the backdrop of the first all-female Mardi Gras krewe at the turn-of-the-century, the acclaimed author’s mesmerizing historical novel tells of two strangers separated by background but bound by an unexpected secret—and of the strength and courage women draw from and inspire in each other. “An undercurrent of New Orleans’s dark side propels the story, heightening the tension and supplying McPhail with a wealth of evocative details.” – Publishers Weekly The year 1900 ushers in a new century and the promise of social change, and women rise together toward equality. Yet rules and restrictions remain, especially for women like Alice Butterworth, whose husband has abruptly disappeared. Desperate to make a living for herself and the child she carries, Alice leaves the bitter cold of Chicago far behind, offering sewing lessons at a New Orleans orphanage. Constance Halstead, a young widow reeling with shock under the threat of her late husband’s gambling debts, has thrown herself into charitable work. Meeting Alice at the orphanage, she offers lodging in exchange for Alice’s help creating a gown for the Leap Year ball of Les Mysterieuses, the first all‑female krewe of Mardi Gras. During Leap Years, women have the rare opportunity to take control in their interactions with men, and upend social convention. Piece by piece, the breathtaking gown takes shape, becoming a symbol of strength for both women, reflecting their progress toward greater independence. But Constance carries a burden that makes it impossible to feel truly free. Her husband, Benton, whose death remains a dangerous mystery, was deep in debt to the Black Hand, the vicious gangsters who controled New Orleans’ notorious Storyville district. Benton’s death has not satisfied them. And as the Mardi Gras festivities reach their fruition, a secret emerges that will cement the bond between Alice and Constance even as it threatens the lives they’re building . . .

Literary New Orleans in the Modern World

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807131596
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Literary New Orleans in the Modern World by : Richard S. Kennedy

Download or read book Literary New Orleans in the Modern World written by Richard S. Kennedy and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2006-03-21 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cleanth Brooks may have summarized it best: "New Orleans has become one of the cities of the mind, and is therefore immortal." Its writers make it so. Like Richard S. Kennedy's earlier collection Literary New Orleans,> these nine essays explore the belletristic Crescent City -- its history, authors, myths, and realities. This volume focuses on twentieth-century New Orleans, beginning with modernism's brief blooming in the 1920s, followed by the fading of New Orleans's peculiarly dreamy romanticism and the flourishing of a distinctive realism, and concluding with a recurrence and transformation of the earlier romantic strain in contemporary Gothic and mystery fiction. Literary New Orleans in the Modern World provides chapters in the history of a unique American city, written in the very spirit of New Orleans as it has cast its spell on writers.

The Story of French New Orleans

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1496804899
Total Pages : 218 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (968 download)

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Book Synopsis The Story of French New Orleans by : Dianne Guenin-Lelle

Download or read book The Story of French New Orleans written by Dianne Guenin-Lelle and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it about the city of New Orleans? History, location, and culture continue to link it to France while distancing it culturally and symbolically from the United States. This book explores the traces of French language, history, and artistic expression that have been present there over the last three hundred years. This volume focuses on the French, Spanish, and American colonial periods to understand the imprint that French socio-cultural dynamic left on the Crescent City. The migration of Acadians to New Orleans at the time the city became a Spanish dominion and the arrival of Haitian refugees when the city became an American territory oddly reinforced its Francophone identity. However, in the process of establishing itself as an urban space in the Antebellum South, the culture of New Orleans became a liability for New Orleans elite after the Louisiana Purchase. New Orleans and the Caribbean share numerous historical, cultural, and linguistic connections. The book analyzes these connections and the shared process of creolization occurring in New Orleans and throughout the Caribbean Basin. It suggests "French" New Orleans might be understood as a trope for unscripted "original" Creole social and cultural elements. Since being Creole came to connote African descent, the study suggests that an association with France in the minds of whites allowed for a less racially-bound and contested social order within the United States.

A Trumpet Around the Corner

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Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN 13 : 1604733187
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis A Trumpet Around the Corner by : Samuel Charters

Download or read book A Trumpet Around the Corner written by Samuel Charters and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2008 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Charters has been studying and writing about New Orleans music for more than fifty years. A Trumpet around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz is the first book to tell the entire story of a century of jazz in New Orleans. Although there is still controversy over the racial origins and cultural sources of New Orleans jazz, Charters provides a balanced assessment of the role played by all three of the city's musical lineages--African American, white, and Creole--in jazz's formative years. Charters also maps the inroads blazed by the city's Italian immigrant musicians, who left their own imprint on the emerging styles. The study is based on the author's own interviews, begun in the 1950s, on the extensive material gathered by the Oral History Project in New Orleans, on the recent scholarship of a new generation of writers, and on an exhaustive examination of related newspaper files from the jazz era. The book extends the study area of his earlier book Jazz: New Orleans, 1885-1957, and breaks new ground with its in-depth discussion of the earliest New Orleans recordings. A Trumpet around the Corner for the first time brings the story up to the present, describing the worldwide interest in the New Orleans jazz revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and the exciting resurgence of the brass bands of the last decades. The book discusses the renewed concern over New Orleans's musical heritage, which is at great risk after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters. Samuel Charters, eminent historian of jazz and blues music, is author of the award-winning The Roots of the Blues and numerous other titles. A resident of Storrs, Connecticut, and Stockholm, Sweden, he is also a Grammy-winning record producer, musician, poet, and fiction writer and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1994.

None But the Righteous

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Publisher : Catapult
ISBN 13 : 1640095624
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis None But the Righteous by : Chantal James

Download or read book None But the Righteous written by Chantal James and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2023-01-17 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lyrical, riveting, and haunting from its opening lines, None But the Righteous is an extraordinary debut that signals the arrival of an unforgettable new voice in contemporary fiction "[A] profound debut novel . . . James captures the simple kindnesses of a cup of coffee or a shared cellphone as though they were religious acts. Where a more ponderous writer might lapse into a lengthy stream of consciousness, James uses short chapters to weave a story of fractured time and uncharted space into the fabric of life after Katrina . . . This is a book of faith aching to be claimed, of a land that dares to be redeemed, of souls searching to be free, of all spirits looking for a home. It’s a metaphysical book deeply rooted in ancient legacies of subjugation . . . This is a deeply haunted novel that moves with calm and ruthless determination, like the eye of a hurricane." —The Los Angeles Times In seventeenth-century Peru, St. Martin de Porres was torn from his body after death. His bones were pillaged as relics, and his spirit was said to inhabit those bones. Four centuries later, amid the havoc of Hurricane Katrina, nineteen-year-old Ham escapes New Orleans with his only valued possession: a pendant handed down from his foster mother, Miss Pearl. There’s something about the pendant that has always gripped him, and the curiosity of it has grown into a kind of comfort. When Ham finally embarks on a fraught journey back home, he seeks the answer to a question he cannot face: Is Miss Pearl still alive? Ham travels from Atlanta to rural Alabama, and from one young woman to another, as he evades the devastation that awaits him in New Orleans. Catching sight of a freedom he’s never known, he must reclaim his body and mind from the spirit who watches over him, guides him, and seizes possession of him.

The World That Made New Orleans

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Publisher : Chicago Review Press
ISBN 13 : 1569765138
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (697 download)

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Book Synopsis The World That Made New Orleans by : Ned Sublette

Download or read book The World That Made New Orleans written by Ned Sublette and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: STRONGNamed one of the Top 10 Books of 2008 by The Times-Picayune. STRONGWinner of the 2009 Humanities Book of the Year award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.STRONG STRONGAwarded the New Orleans Gulf South Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award for 2008. New Orleans is the most elusive of American cities. The product of the centuries-long struggle among three mighty empires--France, Spain, and England--and among their respective American colonies and enslaved African peoples, it has always seemed like a foreign port to most Americans, baffled as they are by its complex cultural inheritance. The World That Made New Orleans offers a new perspective on this insufficiently understood city by telling the remarkable story of New Orleans's first century--a tale of imperial war, religious conflict, the search for treasure, the spread of slavery, the Cuban connection, the cruel aristocracy of sugar, and the very different revolutions that created the United States and Haiti. It demonstrates that New Orleans already had its own distinct personality at the time of Louisiana's statehood in 1812. By then, important roots of American music were firmly planted in its urban swamp--especially in the dances at Congo Square, where enslaved Africans and African Americans appeared en masse on Sundays to, as an 1819 visitor to the city put it, &“rock the city.&” This book is a logical continuation of Ned Sublette's previous volume, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, which was highly praised for its synthesis of musical, cultural, and political history. Just as that book has become a standard resource on Cuba, so too will The World That Made New Orleans long remain essential for understanding the beautiful and tragic story of this most American of cities.

The Negro Caravan

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 604 pages
Book Rating : 4.X/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis The Negro Caravan by : Sterling Allen Brown

Download or read book The Negro Caravan written by Sterling Allen Brown and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Strange History of the American Quadroon

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469607530
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis The Strange History of the American Quadroon by : Emily Clark

Download or read book The Strange History of the American Quadroon written by Emily Clark and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exotic, seductive, and doomed: the antebellum mixed-race free woman of color has long operated as a metaphor for New Orleans. Commonly known as a "quadroon," she and the city she represents rest irretrievably condemned in the popular historical imagination by the linked sins of slavery and interracial sex. However, as Emily Clark shows, the rich archives of New Orleans tell a different story. Free women of color with ancestral roots in New Orleans were as likely to marry in the 1820s as white women. And marriage, not concubinage, was the basis of their family structure. In The Strange History of the American Quadroon, Clark investigates how the narrative of the erotic colored mistress became an elaborate literary and commercial trope, persisting as a symbol that long outlived the political and cultural purposes for which it had been created. Untangling myth and memory, she presents a dramatically new and nuanced understanding of the myths and realities of New Orleans's free women of color.

A New Orleans Voudou Priestess

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Publisher : University Press of Florida
ISBN 13 : 0813040809
Total Pages : 539 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis A New Orleans Voudou Priestess by : Carolyn Morrow Long

Download or read book A New Orleans Voudou Priestess written by Carolyn Morrow Long and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2007-10-07 with total page 539 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century New Orleans, A New Orleans Voudou Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau disentangles the complex threads of the legend surrounding the famous Voudou priestess. According to mysterious, oft-told tales, Laveau was an extraordinary celebrity whose sorcery-fueled influence extended widely from slaves to upper-class whites. Some accounts claim that she led the "orgiastic" Voudou dances in Congo Square and on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, kept a gigantic snake named Zombi, and was the proprietress of an infamous house of assignation. Though legendary for an unusual combination of spiritual power, beauty, charisma, showmanship, intimidation, and shrewd business sense, she also was known for her kindness and charity, nursing yellow fever victims and ministering to condemned prisoners, and her devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. The true story of Marie Laveau, though considerably less flamboyant than the legend, is equally compelling. In separating verifiable fact from semi-truths and complete fabrication, Long explores the unique social, political, and legal setting in which the lives of Marie Laveau's African and European ancestors became intertwined. Changes in New Orleans engendered by French and Spanish rule, the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow segregation affected seven generations of Laveau's family, from enslaved great-grandparents of pure African blood to great-grandchildren who were legally classified as white. Simultaneously, Long examines the evolution of New Orleans Voudou, which until recently has been ignored by scholars.

Beautiful Crescent

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Publisher : Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 9781455617425
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis Beautiful Crescent by : Joan Garvey

Download or read book Beautiful Crescent written by Joan Garvey and published by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-11-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief history for New Orleans' greatest admirers. This concise history of the Crescent City contains chapters covering the Mississippi River, the city's founding, European rule, and more, updated with expanded jazz and African American sections. It is a must for every library and home, and for those who love New Orleans and its rich history.

The History of Southern Women's Literature

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 9780807127537
Total Pages : 724 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis The History of Southern Women's Literature by : Carolyn Perry

Download or read book The History of Southern Women's Literature written by Carolyn Perry and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2002-03-01 with total page 724 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of America’s foremost, and most beloved, authors are also southern and female: Mary Chesnut, Kate Chopin, Ellen Glasgow, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, Maya Angelou, Anne Tyler, Alice Walker, and Lee Smith, to name several. Designating a writer as “southern” if her work reflects the region’s grip on her life, Carolyn Perry and Mary Louise Weaks have produced an invaluable guide to the richly diverse and enduring tradition of southern women’s literature. Their comprehensive history—the first of its kind in a relatively young field—extends from the pioneer woman to the career woman, embracing black and white, poor and privileged, urban and Appalachian perspectives and experiences. The History of Southern Women’s Literature allows readers both to explore individual authors and to follow the developing arc of various genres across time. Conduct books and slave narratives; Civil War diaries and letters; the antebellum, postbellum, and modern novel; autobiography and memoirs; poetry; magazine and newspaper writing—these and more receive close attention. Over seventy contributors are represented here, and their essays discuss a wealth of women’s issues from four centuries: race, urbanization, and feminism; the myth of southern womanhood; preset images and assigned social roles—from the belle to the mammy—and real life behind the facade of meeting others’ expectations; poverty and the labor movement; responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the influence of Gone with the Wind. The history of southern women’s literature tells, ultimately, the story of the search for freedom within an “insidious tradition,” to quote Ellen Glasgow. This teeming volume validates the deep contributions and pleasures of an impressive body of writing and marks a major achievement in women’s and literary studies.

Three Hundred Years of Decadence

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Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807170879
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Three Hundred Years of Decadence by : Robert Azzarello

Download or read book Three Hundred Years of Decadence written by Robert Azzarello and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2019-04-09 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Orleans’s reputation as a decadent city stems in part from its environmental precariousness, its Francophilia, its Afro-Caribbean connections, its Catholicism, and its litany of alleged “vices,” encompassing prostitution, miscegenation, homosexuality, and any number of the seven deadly sins. An evocative work of cultural criticism, Robert Azzarello’s Three Hundred Years of Decadence argues that decadence can convey a more nuanced meaning than simple decay or decline conceived in physical, social, or moral terms. Instead, within New Orleans literature, decadence possesses a complex, even paradoxical relationship with concepts like beauty and health, progress, and technological advance. Azzarello presents the concept of decadence, along with its perception and the uneasy social relations that result, as a suggestive avenue for decoding the long, shifting story of New Orleans and its position in the transatlantic world. By analyzing literary works that span from the late seventeenth century to contemporary speculations about the city’s future, Azzarello uncovers how decadence often names a transfiguration of values, in which ideas about supposed good and bad cannot maintain their stability and end up morphing into one another. These evolving representations of a decadent New Orleans, which Azzarello traces with attention to both details of local history and insights from critical theory, reveal the extent to which the city functions as a contact zone for peoples and cultures from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Drawing on a deep and understudied archive of New Orleans literature, Azzarello considers texts from multiple genres (fiction, poetry, drama, song, and travel writing), including many written in languages other than English. His analysis includes such works of transcription and translation as George Washington Cable’s “Creole Slave Songs” and Mary Haas’s Tunica Texts, which he places in dialogue with canonical and recent works about the city, as well as with neglected texts like Ludwig von Reizenstein’s German-language serial The Mysteries of New Orleans and Charles Chesnutt’s novel Paul Marchand, F.M.C. With its careful analysis and focused scope, Three Hundred Years of Decadence uncovers the immense significance—historically, politically, and aesthetically—that literary imaginings of a decadent New Orleans hold for understanding the city’s position as a multicultural, transatlantic contact zone.