Reading Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass (Literary Criticism in Perspective, 72)

Book info: Reading Abolition: The Critical Reception of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass (Literary Criticism in Perspective, 72) (Hardcover, 196 pages) – Camden House, 2016. Language: English.

A pathbreaking consideration of the intertwined critical responses to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass, giants of abolitionist literature.Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass represent a crucial strand in nineteenth-century American literature: the struggle for the abolition of slavery. Yet there has been no thoroughgoing discussion of the critical receptionof these two giants of abolitionist literature. Reading Abolition narrates and explores the parallels between Stowe's critical reception and Douglass's. The book begins with Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, considering its initial celebration as a work of genius and conscience, its subsequent dismissal in the early twentieth century as anti-Southern and in the mid-twentieth century as racially stereotypical, and finally its recent recovery as a classic of women's, religious, and political fiction. It also considers the reception of Stowe's other, less well-known novels, non-fictional works, and poetry, and how engaging the full Stowe canon has changed the shape of Stowe studies. The second half of the study deals with the reception of Douglass both as a writer of three autobiographies that helped to define the contours of African American autobiography for later writers and critics and as an extraordinarily eloquent and influential orator and journalist. Reading Abolition shows that Stowe's and Douglass's critical destinies have long been intertwined, with questions about race, gender, nationalism, religion, and thenature of literary and rhetorical genius playing crucial roles in critical considerations of both figures. Brian Yothers is Frances Spatz Leighton Endowed Distinguished Professor and Associate Chair of the Department ofEnglish at the University of Texas at El Paso. Editorial Reviews Review [A]n impressive history of the critical context for two of American literature's most widely read nineteenth-century authors. . . . [E]specially good reading for graduate students, as it offers a rare combination of coverage along several metrics: field, author, historical period, and archival history. -- Faith Barter ― H-EARLY AMERICA

This reevaluation of Douglass and Stowe allows readers to see them as transatlantic figures who operated within 'networks of affiliations' that range from Romanticism to the Civil Rights Movement and whose works embody crucial intersections of gender, race, and national identity. Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty. ― CHOICE

Yothers reenacts the nineteenth-century disciplinary formation of bibliography in the best sense of the term, providing a systematic description of the scholarly works' arguments. ― AMERICAN STUDIES QUARTERLY About the Author BRIAN YOTHERS is a professor of English and chair of the Department of English at Saint Louis University.