A Sober Desire for History

A Sober Desire for History PDF Author: Sean R. Busick
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570035654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Widely regarded as the antebellum South's foremost man of letters, William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) wrote novels and poetry that recently have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence of interest. While scholars have previously considered Simms as primarily a poet, editor, and writer of fiction, Sean R. Busick contends that the author is more fully understood as a historian. In this fresh look at Simms and his contributions, Busick brings to light the lasting impact of the South Carolinian's efforts to comprehend American history and to preserve important pieces of the historical record. In A Sober Desire for History, Busick argues that Simms made five significant contributions to American historiography. Simms's achievements include his work as an archivist, preserving a wealth of primary source materials that probably would not exist today if not for his efforts; as a champion of accessible and well-wrought historical writing; and as an advocate for what he considered democratic history - history that recognizes individuals rather than impersonal forces as the impetus for historical events. Loyalists and women, traditionally neglected in the telling of American history. Finally, although Busick shows that Simms published historical romances, biographies, and a state history, he also made an important, lasting contribution to the writing of American history through his support and encouragement of other historians. Busick addresses, among other topics, Simms's ideas on the relationship between history and fiction, his work as a biographer, his writing of the text that would be used to teach history to generations of South Carolina schoolchildren, and his controversial 1856 Northern lecture series on South Carolina's role in the American Revolution.

A Sober Desire for History

A Sober Desire for History PDF Author: Sean R. Busick
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570035654
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book

Book Description
Widely regarded as the antebellum South's foremost man of letters, William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) wrote novels and poetry that recently have enjoyed a remarkable resurgence of interest. While scholars have previously considered Simms as primarily a poet, editor, and writer of fiction, Sean R. Busick contends that the author is more fully understood as a historian. In this fresh look at Simms and his contributions, Busick brings to light the lasting impact of the South Carolinian's efforts to comprehend American history and to preserve important pieces of the historical record. In A Sober Desire for History, Busick argues that Simms made five significant contributions to American historiography. Simms's achievements include his work as an archivist, preserving a wealth of primary source materials that probably would not exist today if not for his efforts; as a champion of accessible and well-wrought historical writing; and as an advocate for what he considered democratic history - history that recognizes individuals rather than impersonal forces as the impetus for historical events. Loyalists and women, traditionally neglected in the telling of American history. Finally, although Busick shows that Simms published historical romances, biographies, and a state history, he also made an important, lasting contribution to the writing of American history through his support and encouragement of other historians. Busick addresses, among other topics, Simms's ideas on the relationship between history and fiction, his work as a biographer, his writing of the text that would be used to teach history to generations of South Carolina schoolchildren, and his controversial 1856 Northern lecture series on South Carolina's role in the American Revolution.

Martyr of the American Revolution

Martyr of the American Revolution PDF Author: C. L. Bragg
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1611177197
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This military history examines the complex factors surrounding the execution of an American militia colonel in British-occupied Charleston, SC. South Carolina patriot militiamen played an integral role in helping the Continental army reclaim their state from its British conquerors. In Martyr of the American Revolution, Cordell L. Bragg, III, examines the events that set Col. Isaac Hayne into a disastrous conflict with two British officers, his execution in Charleston, and the repercussions that extended from South Carolina to the Continental Congress and the halls of British Parliament. Hayne was the most prominent American executed by the British for treason. He and his two principal antagonists, Lt. Col. Nisbet Balfour and Lt. Col. Francis Lord Rawdon, were unwittingly set on a collision course that climaxed in an act that sparked one of the war’s most notable controversies. Martyr of the American Revolution sheds light on why two professional soldiers were driven to commit a seemingly arbitrary deed that halted prisoner exchange and nearly brought disastrous consequences to captive British officers. The death of a patriot in the cause of liberty was not a unique occurrence, but the unusually well-documented events surrounding the execution of Hayne and the involvement of his friends and family makes his story compelling and poignant. Unlike young Capt. Nathan Hale, who suffered a similar fate in 1776, Hayne did not become a folk hero. Yet his execution became an international affair debated in both Parliament and the Continental Congress.

The Oxford History of the Novel in English

The Oxford History of the Novel in English PDF Author: J. Gerald Kennedy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199908397
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 656

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Book Description
The Oxford History of the Novel in English is a 12-volume series presenting a comprehensive, global, and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written by a large, international team of scholars. The series is concerned with novels as a whole, not just the "literary" novel, and each volume includes chapters on the processes of production, distribution, and reception, and on popular fiction and the fictional sub-genres, as well as outlining the work of major novelists, movements, traditions, and tendencies. In thirty-four essays, this volume reconstructs the emergence and early cultivation of the novel in the United States. Contributors discuss precursors to the U.S. novel that appeared as colonial histories, autobiographies, diaries, and narratives of Indian captivity, religious conversion, and slavery, while paying attention to the entangled literary relations that gave way to a distinctly American cultural identity. The Puritan past, more than two centuries of Indian wars, the American Revolution, and the exploration of the West all inspired fictions of American struggle and self-discovery. A fragmented national publishing landscape comprised of small, local presses often disseminating odd, experimental forms eventually gave rise to major houses in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and a consequently robust culture of letters. "Dime novels", literary magazines, innovative print technology, and even favorable postal rates contributed to the burgeoning domestic book trade in place by the time of the Missouri Compromise. Contributors weigh novelists of this period alongside their most enduring fictional works to reveal how even the most "American" of novels sometimes confronted the inhuman practices upon which the promise of the new republic had been made to depend. Similarly, the volume also looks at efforts made to extend American interests into the wider world beyond the nation's borders, and it thoroughly documents the emergence of novels projecting those imperial aspirations.

The Founding of the American Republic

The Founding of the American Republic PDF Author: H. Lee Cheek
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781441145710
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
American Founding aims to provide a fair and thorough reappraisal of the Founding of the American Republic. Oftentimes, the Founders are, when not forgotten, made to fit some "ideological box" -liberals or conservatives, villains or saints. This book proves that such views need to be reconsidered, free from past ideologies and interpretations, to recover their teaching and foster a better understanding of contemporary politics. To do so, the authors let the Founders speak for themselves, by looking first at the Declaration of Independence, which reveals their vision of state and federal authority. Next, they examine how the Declaration was incorporated into the Articles of Confederation, in effect the first Constitution, and finally the Constitution of 1787, the most profound manifestation of the Founders' view of the nature of American politics and society. American Founding takes a broad view of the Founding while resisting an ideologically charged reading of history. This lively, historically accurate analysis will serve anyone interested in American political history and culture.

Visions of Order in William Gilmore Simms

Visions of Order in William Gilmore Simms PDF Author: Masahiro Nakamura
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570038174
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
One of nineteenth-century America's foremost men of letters, William Gilmore Simms (1806-1870) of Charleston, South Carolina, distinguished himself as a historian, poet, and novelist; yet his stalwart allegiance to the ideals of the Confederacy have kept him largely marginalized from the modern literary canon. In this engaging study, Masahiro Nakamura seeks to reinsert Simms in current American literary and cultural studies through a careful consideration of Simms's southern conservatism as a valuable literary counterpoint to the bourgeois individualist ideology of his northern contemporaries. For Nakamura, Simms's vision of social order runs contrary to the staunch individualism expressed in traditional American romances by authors such as James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In his thoughtful approaches to Simms's historical depictions of the making of American history and society, Nakamura finds consistent assertions of social order against the perils of literal and metaphoric wilderness, a conservative vision that he traces to the influence of Simms's southern genius loci. To understand how this southern conservatism also manifests itself in Simms's fiction, Nakamura contrasts Simms's historical romances with those of Hawthorne, as representative of the New England romance tradition, to differentiate the ways in which the two writers interpret the dynamic between the individual and society. Nakamura finds that Simms's protagonists struggle to establish their places within their culture while Hawthorne's characters are often at odds with their culture. The resulting comparison enriches our understanding of both writers.

Imagining Southern Spaces

Imagining Southern Spaces PDF Author: Deniz Bozkurt-Pekar
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110692600
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Identifying the antebellum era in the United States as a transitional setting, Imagining Southern Spaces ́investigates spatialization processes about the South during a time when intensifying debates over the abolition of slavery led to a heightened period of (re)spatialization in the region. Taking the question of abolition as a major factor that shaped how different actors responded to these processes, this book studies spatial imaginations in a selection of abolitionist and proslavery literature of the era. Through this diversity of imaginations, the book points to a multitude of Souths in various economic, political, and cultural entanglements in the American Hemisphere and the Circumatlantic. Thus, it challenges monolithic and provincial representations of the South as a provincial region distinct from the rest of the country.

Between Memory and Desire

Between Memory and Desire PDF Author: R. Stephen Humphreys
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520932586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Middle Easterners today struggle to find solutions to crises of economic stagnation, political gridlock, and cultural identity. In recent decades Islam has become central to this struggle, and almost every issue involves fierce, sometimes violent debates over the role of religion in public life. In this post-9/11 updated edition R. Stephen Humphreys presents a thoughtful analysis of Islam's place in today's Middle East and integrates the medieval and modern history of the region to show how the sacred and secular are tightly interwoven in its political and intellectual life.

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books

A Universal History of the Destruction of Books PDF Author: Fernando Báez
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Censorship
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
Examines the many reasons and motivations for the destruction of books throughout history, citing specific acts from the smashing of ancient Sumerian tablets to the looting of libraries in post-war Iraq.

The Partisan

The Partisan PDF Author: William Gilmore Simms
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : South Carolina
Languages : en
Pages : 976

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Book Description


The partisan. Mellichampe

The partisan. Mellichampe PDF Author: William Gilmore Simms
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 976

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Book Description