From Battlefields Rising: How The Civil War Transformed American LiteratureWhen Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in April of 1861, Walt Whitman declared it "the volcanic upheaval of the nation"--the bloody inception of a war that would dramatically alter the shape and character of American culture along with its political, racial, and social landscape. Prior to the war, America's leading writers had been integral to helping the young nation imagine itself, assert its beliefs, and realize its immense potential. When the Civil War erupted, it forced them to witness not only unimaginable human carnage on the battlefield, but also the disintegration of the foundational symbolic order they had helped to create. The war demanded new frameworks for understanding the world and new forms of communication that could engage with the immensity of the conflict. It fostered both social and cultural experimentation. Now available in paperback, From Battlefields Rising explores the profound impact of the war on writers including Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, and Frederick Douglass. As the writers of the time grappled with the war's impact on the individual and the national psyche, their responses multiplied and transmuted. Whitman's poetry and prose, for example, was chastened and deepened by his years spent ministering to wounded soldiers; off the battlefield, the anguish of war would come to suffuse the austere, elliptical poems that Emily Dickinson was writing from afar; and Hawthorne was rendered silent by his reading of military reports and talks with soldiers. Calling into question every prior presumption and ideal, the war forever changed America's early idealism-and consequently its literature-into something far more ambivalent and raw. An absorbing group portrait of the period's most important writers, From Battlefields Rising flashes with forgotten historical details and elegant new ideas. It alters previous perceptions about the evolution of American literature and how Americans have understood and expressed their common history. |
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User Review - Donna828 - LibraryThingRandall Fuller makes use of a volcano metaphor to begin and end his enthusiastic yet complex task of exploring the effects of the divisive Civil War upon American literature. To the poets and authors ... Read full review
Contents
| 1 | |
Chapter 1 Beat Beat Drums | 11 |
Chapter 2 Concord | 34 |
Chapter 3 Shiloh | 52 |
Chapter 4 Telling It Slant | 74 |
Chapter 5 Port Royal | 93 |
Chapter 6 Fathers and Sons | 116 |
Other editions - View all
From Battlefields Rising:How The Civil War Transformed American Literature ... Randall Fuller No preview available - 2011 |
From Battlefields Rising: How The Civil War Transformed American Literature Randall Fuller No preview available - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
abolitionist Alcott American Antietam Atlantic Monthly battle began Boston Bull Run camp Charles Russell Lowell Civil Concord Confederate Courtesy Library dead death Dedlow described Douglass dream earlier Edward emancipation Emily Dickinson enlist essay father feel field fight figure fire Hawthorne’s Henry Herman Melville hope hospital human Ibid imagination James John Brown journal killed later Leaves of Grass Letters Lincoln literary live Longfellow Louisa May Alcott Lowell’s man’s Massachusetts Melville’s moral Mosby’s Nathaniel Hawthorne nation never North northern Photographs Division poem poet poetic poetry Port Royal portrait Prints and Photographs recalled regiment Robert Gould Shaw romance Russell Lowell seemed Shiloh shot slavery slaves soldiers soon soul South Carolina spring summer Theodore Winthrop Thomas Wentworth Higginson Thoreau troops Union army University Press Virginia volcano Waldo Emerson Walt Whitman war’s Washington Wilderness William wounded writing wrote York young
Bibliographic information
| Title | From Battlefields Rising: How The Civil War Transformed American Literature |
| Author | Randall Fuller |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2011 |
| ISBN | 0199792658, 9780199792658 |
| Length | 272 pages |
| Subjects | › › History / United States / Civil War Period (1850-1877) Literary Collections / American / General Literary Criticism / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |