The Aesthetics and Politics of the Crowd in American Literature

Mary Esteve052181488X, 9780521814881, 9780511064975

Mary Esteve provides a study of crowd representations in Americanliterature from the antebellum era to the early twentieth century. Asa central icon of political and cultural democracy, the crowd occupiesa prominent place in the American literary and cultural landscape.Esteve examines a range of writing by Poe, Hawthorne, Lydia MariaChild,Du Bois, James, and Stephen Crane among others. These writers,she argues, distinguish between the aesthetics of immersion in acrowd and the mode of collectivity demanded of political-liberal subjects.In their representations of everyday crowds, ranging fromstreamsof urban pedestrians to swarms of train travellers, from upper-classparties to lower-class revivalist meetings, such authors seize on thepolitical problems facing a mass liberal democracy – problems such asthe stipulations of citizenship, nation formation, mass immigration,and the emergence of mass media. Esteve examines both the aestheticand political meanings of such urban crowd scenes.

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Table of contents :
Half-title……Page 3
Series-title……Page 4
Title……Page 5
Copyright……Page 6
Dedication……Page 7
Contents……Page 9
Illustrations……Page 10
Acknowledgments……Page 11
Introduction……Page 13
THE CROWD MIND……Page 16
THE PUBLIC SQUARE……Page 24
THE AESTHETIC BEHOLDER……Page 27
THE POLITICAL CITIZEN……Page 30
CHAPTER 1 When travelers swarm forth: antebellum urban aesthetics and the contours of the political……Page 34
PHYSIOLOGY FROM TOP TO TOE……Page 39
ORGANS OF JUSTICE……Page 46
SHOCK AESTHETICS……Page 52
FLUTTERING CORPSES AND CITIZENS……Page 59
CHAPTER 2 In “the thick of the stream”: Henry James and the public sphere……Page 71
DOMESTIC CROWDEDNESS……Page 74
GREAT FORCES OF PUBLICITY……Page 90
CHAPTER 3 A “gorgeous neutrality”: social justice and Stephen Crane’s documentary anaesthetics……Page 108
ANAESTHETIC REVELATIONS……Page 113
GORGEOUS NEUTRALITIES……Page 116
CHAPTER 4 Vicious gregariousness: White City, the nation form, and the souls of lynched folk……Page 130
WHITE CITY: THE CROWD, THE PUBLIC, THE NATION……Page 139
THE LAWFULNESS OF LYNCHING……Page 149
UNLYNCHING THE SOUL: THE MARRIAGE OF ONE AND ZERO……Page 153
CHAPTER 5 A “moving mosaic”: Harlem,primitivism, and Nella Larsen’s Quicksand……Page 164
CHAPTER 6 Breaking the waves: mass immigration, trauma, and ethno-political consciousness in Cahan, Yezierska, and Roth……Page 184
SUCCESSIVE SUCCESSES……Page 188
BLOOD AND IRON……Page 193
BORN IN THE CRACK……Page 199
INTRODUCTION……Page 212
1 ANTEBELLUM AESTHETICS AND THE CONTOURS OF THE POLITICAL……Page 217
2 JAMES AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE……Page 223
3 SOCIAL JUSTICE AND CRANE’S DOCUMENTARY ANAESTHETICS……Page 229
4 WHITE CITY, THE NATION FORM, AND THE SOULS OF LYNCHED FOLK……Page 235
5 HARLEM, PRIMITIVISM, AND LARSEN……Page 243
6 IMMIGRATION, TRAUMA, AND ETHNO-POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS……Page 246
Bibliography……Page 251
Index……Page 268