The Syntax of Class

Writing Inequality in Nineteenth-Century America

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, American
Cover of the book The Syntax of Class by Amy Schrager Lang, Princeton University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Amy Schrager Lang ISBN: 9781400825639
Publisher: Princeton University Press Publication: January 10, 2009
Imprint: Princeton University Press Language: English
Author: Amy Schrager Lang
ISBN: 9781400825639
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Publication: January 10, 2009
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Language: English

The Syntax of Class explores the literary expression of the crisis of social classification that occupied U.S. public discourse in the wake of the European revolutions of 1848. Lacking a native language for expressing class differences, American writers struggled to find social taxonomies able to capture--and manage--increasingly apparent inequalities of wealth and power.

As new social types emerged at midcentury and, with them, new narratives of success and failure, police and reformers alarmed the public with stories of the rise and proliferation of the "dangerous classes." At the same time, novelists as different as Maria Cummins, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frank Webb, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Horatio Alger Jr. focused their attention on dense engagements across the lines of class. Turning to the middle-class idea of "home" as a figure for social harmony and to the lexicons of race and gender in their effort to devise a syntax for the representation of class, these writers worked to solve the puzzle of inequity in their putatively classless nation. This study charts the kaleidoscopic substitution of terms through which they rendered class distinctions and follows these renderings as they circulated in and through a wider cultural discourse about the dangers of class conflict.

This welcome book is a finely achieved study of the operation of class in nineteenth-century American fiction--and of its entanglements with the languages of race and gender.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The Syntax of Class explores the literary expression of the crisis of social classification that occupied U.S. public discourse in the wake of the European revolutions of 1848. Lacking a native language for expressing class differences, American writers struggled to find social taxonomies able to capture--and manage--increasingly apparent inequalities of wealth and power.

As new social types emerged at midcentury and, with them, new narratives of success and failure, police and reformers alarmed the public with stories of the rise and proliferation of the "dangerous classes." At the same time, novelists as different as Maria Cummins, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frank Webb, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Horatio Alger Jr. focused their attention on dense engagements across the lines of class. Turning to the middle-class idea of "home" as a figure for social harmony and to the lexicons of race and gender in their effort to devise a syntax for the representation of class, these writers worked to solve the puzzle of inequity in their putatively classless nation. This study charts the kaleidoscopic substitution of terms through which they rendered class distinctions and follows these renderings as they circulated in and through a wider cultural discourse about the dangers of class conflict.

This welcome book is a finely achieved study of the operation of class in nineteenth-century American fiction--and of its entanglements with the languages of race and gender.

More books from Princeton University Press

Cover of the book Social Trends in American Life by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Manufacturing Ideology by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Sex and Secularism by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Spin Glasses and Complexity by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Leadership and the Rise of Great Powers by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book The European Guilds by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book The Star and the Stripes by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Talk at the Brink by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book China's New Confucianism by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Not for Profit by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Getting Respect by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Caught by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Economics in Perspective by Amy Schrager Lang
Cover of the book Who Owns Antiquity? by Amy Schrager Lang
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy