Read Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture

Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture

Bruce A. Ronda

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Description:Liberator? Madman? Genius? Martyr? John Brown achieved immediate andlasting notoriety through his attempt to foment an armed insurrection amongblack slaves in 1859, an event that many believed hastened the outbreak ofthe U.S. Civil War. From the moment of his capture at Harper's Ferry,Virginia, there have been widely varying interpretations of the man and hismotivations. Sometimes depicted as the grim conscience of a nation whosefounding proclaimed the equality of all people, sometimes portrayed as aterrorist more devoted to his own martyrdom than to his cause, Brown hasbeen a source of inspiration, fascination, and frustration for some of thecountry's greatest writers and artists.In this absorbing book, Bruce Ronda examines the representations of Brownchronologically, ranging from Thoreau's “Plea for Captain John Brown”-withits ardent defense of Brown as a patriot, Transcendentalist, and true NewEnglander-through treatments by anonymous southern writers and well-knownauthors such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Herman Melville, Richard HenryDana, Frederick Douglass, William Dean Howells, and Edwin ArlingtonRobinson. Ronda then considers the major treatments of Brown in the early tomid-twentieth century by W. E. B. DuBois, Stephen Vincent Benet, and RobertPenn Warren. Of particular interest are discussions of a 1930s poem byMuriel Rukeyser, Truman Nelson's 1960 novel The Surveyor, and artwork byJacob Lawrence. He concludes with studies of novels by three contemporaryauthors: Russell Banks, Michelle Cliff, and Bruce Olds.Reading the Old Man challenges the assumption that literature about Brownfalls predictably into two camps-celebration or outrage-either defendingBrown as liberator and martyr or vilifying him as a traitor, incendiary, andmadman. Instead, Ronda discovers a variety of approaches and revealssubtler, more complex portraits, even comparing Brown's fervor to that oftoday's religious terrorists.Bruce Ronda is professor and chair of the Department of English at ColoradoState University. He is the author of Intellect and Spirit: The Life andWorks of Robert Coles and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her OwnTerms. He is the editor of The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: AmericanRenaissance Woman.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture. To get started finding Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Format: PDF, EPUB & Kindle Edition

Publisher: University of Tennessee Press

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ISBN: 157233620X

Description: Liberator? Madman? Genius? Martyr? John Brown achieved immediate andlasting notoriety through his attempt to foment an armed insurrection amongblack slaves in 1859, an event that many believed hastened the outbreak ofthe U.S. Civil War. From the moment of his capture at Harper's Ferry,Virginia, there have been widely varying interpretations of the man and hismotivations. Sometimes depicted as the grim conscience of a nation whosefounding proclaimed the equality of all people, sometimes portrayed as aterrorist more devoted to his own martyrdom than to his cause, Brown hasbeen a source of inspiration, fascination, and frustration for some of thecountry's greatest writers and artists.In this absorbing book, Bruce Ronda examines the representations of Brownchronologically, ranging from Thoreau's “Plea for Captain John Brown”-withits ardent defense of Brown as a patriot, Transcendentalist, and true NewEnglander-through treatments by anonymous southern writers and well-knownauthors such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Herman Melville, Richard HenryDana, Frederick Douglass, William Dean Howells, and Edwin ArlingtonRobinson. Ronda then considers the major treatments of Brown in the early tomid-twentieth century by W. E. B. DuBois, Stephen Vincent Benet, and RobertPenn Warren. Of particular interest are discussions of a 1930s poem byMuriel Rukeyser, Truman Nelson's 1960 novel The Surveyor, and artwork byJacob Lawrence. He concludes with studies of novels by three contemporaryauthors: Russell Banks, Michelle Cliff, and Bruce Olds.Reading the Old Man challenges the assumption that literature about Brownfalls predictably into two camps-celebration or outrage-either defendingBrown as liberator and martyr or vilifying him as a traitor, incendiary, andmadman. Instead, Ronda discovers a variety of approaches and revealssubtler, more complex portraits, even comparing Brown's fervor to that oftoday's religious terrorists.Bruce Ronda is professor and chair of the Department of English at ColoradoState University. He is the author of Intellect and Spirit: The Life andWorks of Robert Coles and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her OwnTerms. He is the editor of The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: AmericanRenaissance Woman.We have made it easy for you to find a PDF Ebooks without any digging. And by having access to our ebooks online or by storing it on your computer, you have convenient answers with Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture. To get started finding Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture, you are right to find our website which has a comprehensive collection of manuals listed.
Our library is the biggest of these that have literally hundreds of thousands of different products represented.

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Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture

Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture

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