000			04254cam a22005534a 4500
001			muse32572
003			MdBmJHUP
005			20210127151102.0
006			m o d
007			cr||||||||nn|n
008			131017s2014 mdu o 00 0 eng d
010			_z 2013033296
020			_a9781421413334
020			_a1421413337
020			_z9781421413327 (hardcover : alk. paper)
020			_z1421413329 (hardcover : alk. paper)
035			_a(OCoLC)881627687
040			_aMdBmJHUP _cMdBmJHUP
043			_an-us---
050	0	4	_aPS217.C35 _bB37 2014
082	0		_a810.9/3556 _223
100	1		_aBarton, John Cyril.
245	1	0	_aLiterary Executions _bCapital Punishment and American Culture, 1820-1925 / _cJohn Cyril Barton.
264		1	_bJohns Hopkins University Press,
264		3	_bProject MUSE,
300			_a1 online resource (pages cm)
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505	0		_aIntroduction: literary executions -- Anti-gallows activism in antebellum American law & literature -- Simms, Child, & the aesthetics of crime and punishment -- Literary executions in popular antebellum fiction -- Hawthorne & the evidentiary value of literature -- Melville, Mackenzie & the Somers affair -- An American travesty: capital punishment & the criminal justice system in Dreiser's An American tragedy -- Epilogue: the death penalty in literature.
506	0		_aOpen Access _fUnrestricted online access _2star
520			_a"In Literary Executions, John Barton analyzes nineteenth-century representations of, responses to, and arguments for and against the death penalty in the United States. The author creates a generative dialogue between artistic relics and legal history. Novels, short stories, poems, and creative nonfiction engage with legislative reports, trial transcripts, legal documents, newspaper and journal articles, treatises, and popular books (like The Record of Crimes and The Gallows, the Prison, and the Poor House), all of which participated in the debate over capital punishment. Barton focuses on several canonical figures--James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Theodore Dreiser--and offers new readings of their work in light of the death penalty controversy. Barton also gives close attention to a host of then-popular-but-now-forgotten writers--particularly John Neal, Slidell MacKenzie, William Gilmore Simms, Sylvester Judd, and George Lippard--whose work helped shape or was in turn shaped by the influential anti-gallows movement. As illustrated in the book's epigraph by Samuel Johnson -- "Depend upon it Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully" -- Barton argues that the high stakes of capital punishment dramatize the confrontation between the citizen-subject and sovereign authority. In bringing together the social and the aesthetic, Barton traces the emergence of the modern State's administration of lawful death. The book is intended primarily for literary scholars, but cultural and legal historians will also find value in it, as will anyone interested in the intersections among law, culture, and the humanities"-- _cProvided by publisher.
588			_aDescription based on print version record.
650		0	_aCapital punishment _xMoral and ethical aspects _zUnited States _xHistory.
650		0	_aPublic opinion _zUnited States.
650		0	_aCapital punishment _zUnited States _xPublic opinion.
650		0	_aAmerican literature _y20th century _xHistory and criticism.
650		0	_aAmerican literature _y19th century _xHistory and criticism.
650		0	_aExecutions and executioners in literature.
650		0	_aCapital punishment in literature.
655		7	_aElectronic books. _2local
710	2		_aProject Muse. _edistributor
830		0	_aBook collections on Project MUSE.
856	4	0	_zFull text available: _uhttps://muse.jhu.edu/book/32640/
945			_aProject MUSE - 2014 Literature
945			_aProject MUSE - 2014 Complete
999			_c24548 _d24548