{"product_id":"the-temple-and-the-forum-the-american-museum-and-cultural-authority-in-hawthorne-melville-stowe-and-whitman-9780817315634","title":"The Temple and the Forum The American Museum and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe rise of the museum as a cultural institution in 19th-century America brought with it many contested notions. This work explores the shared concerns and practices of 19th-century American museums and the literary productions of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAn ambitious, highly original, well-written, and beautifully researched piece of scholarship.... Harrison's project is the first to analyze fully P. T. Barnum's American Museum - arguably the best-known cultural institution in antebellum America - in relation to the literary culture of the period. His concern with the politics of interpretation and authority in public spaces links a surprising range of writers to the commercial extravaganzas pioneered by Barnum, and it leads Harrison to a remarkable excavation of antebellum America's now-forgotten public spaces. In its careful attention to the politics of cultural authority, The Temple and the Forum proves a worthy successor to Lawrence Levine's classic Highbrow\/Lowbrow. - Benjamin Reiss, author of The Showman and the Slave: Race, Death, and Memory in Barnum's America","brand":"The University of Alabama Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51038561665367,"sku":"9780817315634","price":999.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780817315634.jpg?v=1750940686","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-temple-and-the-forum-the-american-museum-and-cultural-authority-in-hawthorne-melville-stowe-and-whitman-9780817315634","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}