Reimagining the Republic : : Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée / / ed. by Robert Levine, Sandra M. Gustafson.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• MitwirkendeR: Ball, Molly,; Bentley, Nancy,; Chakkalakal, Tess,; Chinn, Sarah E.,; Elliott, Mark,; Ernest, John,; Ewing, Annemarie Mott,; Greeson, Jennifer Rae,; Gustafson, Sandra M.,; Hale, Mary B.,; Hale, Mary,; Hawkes, DeLisa D.,; Holbo, Christine,; Karcher, Carolyn L.,; Karcher, Carolyn,; Khan, Almas,; Laski, Gregory,; Leslie, Alex Zweber,; Levine, Robert S.,; Levine, Robert,; Thomas, Brook,; Warren, Kenneth W.,; Warren, Kenneth,
• HerausgeberIn: Gustafson, Sandra M.,; Levine, Robert,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Reconstructing America
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (336 p.) :; 6 b/w illustrations

Albion W. Tourgée (1838–1905) was a major force for social, legal, and literary transformation in the second half of the nineteenth century. Best known for his Reconstruction novels A Fool’s Errand (1879) and Bricks without Straw (1880), and for his key role in the civil rights case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), challenging Louisiana’s law segregating railroad cars, Tourgée published more than a dozen novels and a volume of short stories, as well as nonfiction works of history, law, and politics. This volume is the first collection focused on Tourgée’s literary work and intends to establish his reputation as one of the great writers of fiction about the Reconstruction era arguably the greatest for the wide historical and geographical sweep of his novels and his ability to work with multiple points of view. As a white novelist interested in the rights of African Americans, Tourgée was committed to developing not a single Black perspective but multiple Black perspectives, sometimes even in conflict. The challenge was to do justice to those perspectives in the larger context of the story he wanted to tell about a multiracial America. The seventeen essays in this volume are grouped around three large topics: race, citizenship, and nation. The volume also includes a Preface, Introduction, Afterword, Bibliography, and Chronology providing an overview of his career. This collection changes the way that we view Tourgée by highlighting his contributions as a writer and editor and as a supporter of African American writers. Exploring the full spectrum of his literary works and cultural engagements, Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion Tourgée reveals a new Tourgée for our moment of renewed interest in the literature and politics of Reconstruction.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- Introduction: Literary Tourgée -- I Race -- 1 Gothic Reconstruction: Hawthorne’s House in Tourgée’s Toinette and A Royal Gentleman -- 2 Tourgée’s A Fool’s Errand and the Limits of White Radicalism -- 3 “Queer Synecdoche” Tourgée’s Bricks without Straw and Black Kinship -- 4 Reparations and Passing in Tourgée’s Pactolus Prime -- 5 The True Friendship of Charles W. Chesnutt and Albion W. Tourgée -- 6 “Their Position Must Be Mined” Tourgée in Charles Chesnutt’s Career-Long Engagement with White Readers -- II Citizenship -- 7 Reimagining the Republic: Tourgée on Citizenship -- 8 Tourgée, Democracy, Romance, and the Art of Fiction -- 9 Exodian Allegories of Incomplete Emancipation in Bricks without Straw -- 10 The Business of Marriage, Pluralized: Mormonism and Money in Button’s Inn -- 11 Tourgée’s New Realism: Disciplinary Reparation and the Quest for Racial Justice -- 12 With Gauge and Swallow, Attorneys: Tourgée’s Legal Romance -- III Nation -- 13 “I Don’t Care a Rag for the Union as It Was” Amputation, the Past, and the Work of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Bricks without Straw -- 14 Tracking Redress in the West: The Railroad in Tourgée’s Figs and Thistles and Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don -- 15 The Literary Lost Cause of Albion Tourgée: The Project of Our Continent -- 16 Tourgée on the Dangers of Reconciliation: Revenge in the Reconstruction-Era Novels -- 17 Thomas Dixon, Albion Tourgée, and the False Balance of the Civil War -- Afterword -- Albion W. Tourgée: A Chronology -- Acknowledgments -- Selected Bibliography -- Contributors -- Index