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Books > Social sciences > Warfare & defence > War & defence operations > Civil war
In Belles and Poets, Julia Nitz analyzes the Civil War diary
writing of eight white women from the U.S. South, focusing
specifically on how they made sense of the world around them
through references to literary texts. Nitz finds that many diarists
incorporated allusions to poems, plays, and novels, especially
works by Shakespeare and the British Romantic poets, in moments of
uncertainty and crisis. While previous studies have overlooked or
neglected such literary allusions in personal writings, regarding
them as mere embellishments or signs of elite social status, Nitz
reveals that these references functioned as codes through which
women diarists contemplated their roles in society and addressed
topics related to slavery, Confederate politics, gender, and
personal identity. Nitz's innovative study of identity construction
and literary intertextuality focuses on diaries written by the
following women: Eliza Frances (Fanny) Andrews of Georgia
(1840-1931), Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut of South Carolina
(1823-1886), Malvina Sara Black Gist of South Carolina (1842-1930),
Sarah Ida Fowler Morgan of Louisiana (1842-1909), Cornelia Peake
McDonald of Virginia (1822-1909), Judith White Brockenbrough
McGuire of Virginia (1813-1897), Sarah Katherine (Kate) Stone of
Louisiana (1841-1907), and Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas of Georgia
(1843-1907). These women's diaries circulated in postwar
commemoration associations, and several saw publication. The public
acclaim they received helped shape the collective memory of the war
and, according to Nitz, further legitimized notions of racial
supremacy and segregation. Comparing and contrasting their own
lives to literary precedents and fictional role models allowed the
diarists to process the privations of war, the loss of family
members, and the looming defeat of the Confederacy. Belles and
Poets establishes the extent to which literature offered a means of
exploring ideas and convictions about class, gender, and racial
hierarchies in the Civil War-era South. Nitz's work shows that
literary allusions in wartime diaries expose the ways in which some
white southern women coped with the war and its potential threats
to their way of life.
Americans wrote fiercely during the Civil War. War surprised,
devastated, and opened up imagination, taking hold of Americans'
words as well as their homes and families. The personal
diary-wildly ragged yet rooted in day following day-was one place
Americans wrote their war. Diaries, then, have become one of the
best-known, most-used sources for exploring the life of the mind in
a war-torn place and time. Delving into several familiar wartime
diaries kept by women of the southern slave-owning class, Steven
Stowe recaptures their motivations to keep the days close even as
war tore apart the brutal system of slavery that had benefited
them. Whether the diarists recorded thoughts about themselves,
their opinions about men, or their observations about slavery,
race, and warfare, Stowe shows how these women, by writing the
immediate moment, found meaning in a changing world. In studying
the inner lives of these unsympathetic characters, Stowe also
explores the importance-and the limits-of historical empathy as a
condition for knowing the past, demonstrating how these plain,
first-draft texts can offer new ways to make sense of the world in
which these Confederate women lived.
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Sitting Bull's Cookbook; A Family Tree Story
- With Added Information about the Families of Madden, Tewell/Toole/O'Toole, Janis, Palmer, Gallego/Giago, Yellowbird/Yellowbird-Steele, Lone Horn, Shangreaux, Montileaux, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Dragging
(Hardcover, With Added Appendix Section Genealogy ed.)
C. Tewell, Phaedra Madden
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R3,316
Discovery Miles 33 160
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Ships in 12 - 19 working days
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In Contesting Commemoration: The 1876 Centennial, Independence Day,
and the Reconstruction-Era South, Jack Noe examines identity and
nationalism in the post-Civil War South through the lens of
commemorative activity, namely Independence Day celebrations and
the Centennial of 1876. Both events presented opportunities for
whites, Blacks, northerners, and southerners to reflect on their
identity as Americans. The often colorful and engaging discourse
surrounding these observances provides a fascinating portrait of
this fractured moment in the development of American nationalism.
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