Description
Book SynopsisAmerican Literature, Lynching, and the Spectator in the Crowd: Spectacular Violence examines spectatorship in American literature at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing on texts by Theodore Dreiser, Miriam Michelson, Irvin S. Cobb, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. The spectator functions as a lens through which we view the relationship between violence and social change as depicted in the politically-charged crowds of fictional lynch mob scenes that expose the central tension of American democracythe struggle for balance between the rights of the individual and the demands of the community. This has played out in American fiction through clashes between crowds and the primarily rural images that have so often been used to describe America. While this pastoral vision of America has dominated the study of American literature, this book argues for a reassessment of fiction that takes into consideration that the way the country defines itself collectively is as significant as the way its
Trade Review“This is a rich and intelligent analysis of an important—but rarely investigated—field of U.S. literary and cultural history. Lelekis’s study recovers the work of influential turn-of-the-century writers such as Irvin Cobb and Miriam Michelson, and it reexamines key texts by more canonical figures, such as Theodore Dreiser and Paul Laurence Dunbar, asking how these authors explored and questioned American principles of democracy through representations of mob violence and spectators. By focusing long-overdue attention on the complex relations between journalists, crowds, and fictional narratives, Lelekis’s work sheds new light on the intersectionality of race, gender, and spectatorship in turn-of-the-century U.S. culture.” -- William Scott, University of Pittsburgh
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Chapter 1: A Critical Introduction Spectatorship and the Evolution of Crowds in Literature The Intersection of Journalism, Politics, and Fiction Chapter 2: Reporting the Crowd Chapter 3: The Female Reporter as Spectator and Spectacle Chapter 4: Confronting the Crowd and Vigilante Violence Chapter 5: Recounting the Horror of the Spectacle Bibliography Index About the Author
