Uncle Tom

From Martyr to Traitor

Adena Spingarn (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

272 Seiten

2021
Stanford University Press (Verlag)
978-1-5036-3062-8 (ISBN)

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Uncle Tom charts the dramatic cultural transformation of perhaps the most controversial literary character in American history. From his origins as the heroic, Christ-like protagonist of Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel, the best-selling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible, Uncle Tom has become a widely recognized epithet for a black person deemed so subservient to whites that he betrays his race. Readers have long noted that Stowe's character is not the traitorous sycophant that his name connotes today. Adena Spingarn traces his evolution in the American imagination, offering the first comprehensive account of a figure central to American conversations about race and racial representation from 1852 to the present. We learn of the radical political potential of the novel's many theatrical spinoffs even in the Jim Crow era, Uncle Tom's breezy disavowal by prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance, and a developing critique of "Uncle Tom roles" in Hollywood. Within the stubborn American binary of black and white, citizens have used this rhetorical figure to debate the boundaries of racial difference and the legacy of slavery. Through Uncle Tom, black Americans have disputed various strategies for racial progress and defined the most desirable and harmful images of black personhood in literature and popular culture.

Adena Spingarn is a writer and scholar of American cultural history who has taught literature at Stanford University and Harvard University. She is currently working on a book on racial censorship in American movies from the silent era to the 1960s.

1. A Manly Hero

2. Uncle Tom on the American Stage

3. Uncle Tom and Jim Crow

4. Writing the Old Negro

5. Uncle Toms and New Negroes

6. Writing Off Uncle Tom

Erscheinungsdatum	20.09.2021
Vorwort	Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Zusatzinfo	16 halftones
Verlagsort	Palo Alto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-5036-3062-5 / 1503630625
ISBN-13	978-1-5036-3062-8 / 9781503630628
Zustand	Neuware