Grief and Genre in American Literature, 1790-1870

Taylor & Francis

Grief and Genre in American Literature, 1790-1870Author(s): Desire Henderson\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9781409420866, 978-1409420866\nSynopsis\nFocusing on the role of genre in the formation of dominant conceptions of death and dying, Desire Henderson examines literary texts and social spaces devoted to death and mourning in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. Henderson shows how William Hill Brown, Susanna Rowson, and Hannah Webster borrowed from and challenged funeral sermon conventions in their novelistic portrayals of the deaths of fallen women; contrasts the eulogies for George Washington with William Apess's \""Eulogy for King Philip\"" to expose conflicts between national ideology and indigenous history; examines Frederick Douglass's use of the slave cemetery to represent the costs of slavery for African American families; suggests that the ideas about democracy materialized in Civil War cemeterie.