Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic
5/5
()
About this ebook
A genteel southern intellectual, saloniste, and wife to a prominent colonel in Jefferson Davis’s inner circle, Mary Chesnut today is remembered best for her penetrating Civil War diary. Composed between 1861 and 1865 and revised thoroughly from the late 1870s until Chesnut’s death in 1886, the diary was published first in 1905, again in 1949, and later, to great acclaim, in 1981. This complicated literary history and the questions that attend it—which edition represents the real Chesnut? To what genre does this text belong?—may explain why the document largely has, until now, been overlooked in literary studies.
Julia A. Stern’s critical analysis returns Chesnut to her rightful place among American writers. In Mary Chesnut’s Civil War Epic, Stern argues that the revised diary offers the most trenchant literary account of race and slavery until the work of Faulkner and that, along with his Yoknapatawpha novels, it constitutes one of the two great Civil War epics of the American canon. By restoring Chesnut’s 1880s revision to its complex, multidecade cultural context, Stern argues both for Chesnut’s reinsertion into the pantheon of nineteenth-century American letters and for her centrality to the literary history of women’s writing as it evolved from sentimental to tragic to realist forms.
Read more from Julia A. Stern
The Plight of Feeling: Sympathy and Dissent in the Early American Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBette Davis Black and White Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic
Related ebooks
Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Spectacle of Grief: Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOLD MASSA'S PEOPLE: The Old Slaves Tell Their Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Queen: 70 Chapters in the Life of Elizabeth II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Train From Atlanta Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Revolutionary Bergen County: The Road to Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Courageous Women of the Civil War: Soldiers, Spies, Medics, and More Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Texas Entertainers: Lone Stars in Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Girl from the Hermitage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings"Dear Darling Loulie" Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jane Seymour: An Illustrated Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBuying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker: The Life Cycle of an Eighteenth-Century Woman Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stage-coach and Tavern Days Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhatever Happened to Mary Janeway?: A Home Child Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jane Austen Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Giant In Gray: A Biography Of Wade Hampton Of South Carolina Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Voices From St. Simons: Personal Narratives of an Island's Past Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMiss You: The World War II Letters of Barbara Wooddall Taylor and Charles E. Taylor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588-1603 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Centreville and Chantilly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWilliam John Wills: Pioneer of the Australian Outback Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Vast and Fiendish Plot:: The Confederate Attack on New York City Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A Diary From Dixie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life in a Time of Plague: A Coronavirus Lockdown Diary Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoices of the American Revolution in the Carolinas Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Love and Duty: Confederate Widows and the Emotional Politics of Loss Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Colonial Cavalier; or, Southern Life before the Revolution Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Lady of Cotton: Hannah Greg, Mistress of Quarry Bank Mill Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Literary Criticism For You
12 Rules For Life: by Jordan Peterson | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.by Brené Brown | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The 48 Laws of Power: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One Hundred Years of Solitude: A Novel by Gabriel Garcia Márquez | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Man's Search for Meaning: by Viktor E. Frankl | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Art of Seduction: by Robert Greene | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Power of Habit: by Charles Duhigg | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Verity: by Colleen Hoover | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5SUMMARY Of The Plant Paradox: The Hidden Dangers in Healthy Foods That Cause Disease and Weight Gain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself by Michael A. Singer | Conversation Starters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Secret History: by Donna Tartt | Conversation Starters Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Court of Thorns and Roses: A Novel by Sarah J. Maas | Conversation Starters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Circe: by Madeline Miller | Conversation Starters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain | Conversation Starters Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Lincoln Lawyer: A Mysterious Profile Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Reader’s Companion to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Virtues Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Mary Chesnut's Civil War Epic
4 ratings0 reviews