Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Long Civil War

Abstract

American literature in the nineteenth century is often divided into two asymmetrical halves, neatly separated by the Civil War. In Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Long Civil War, Cody Marrs argues that the war is a far more elastic boundary for literary history than has frequently been assumed. Focusing on the later writings of Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson, this book shows how the war took imaginative shape across, and even beyond, the nineteenth century, inflecting literary forms and expressions for decades after 1865. These writers, Marrs demonstrates, are best understood not as antebellum or postbellum figures but as transbellum authors who cipher their later experiences through their wartime impressions and prewar ideals. This book is a bold, revisionary contribution to debates about temporality, periodization, and the shape of American literary history.

History of Development Haute Couture in the Fashion Industry

“…Additionally, the tradition of grand social gatherings organized by the French nobility contributed to the vitality of Haute Couture, as these events prompted customers to seek custom-made clothing to stand out rather than opting for ready-to-wear garments. Fashion was a significant expression of French culture, and the French took great pride in it, which contrasted starkly with America, where literature, particularly poetry and novels, held a more central place in their cultural values (Lynam, 1972;Marrs, 2015).…”

Dickinson's Dao

“…When a mutual surrender embodied by the death metaphor is applied to human interaction, it helps to cultivate a perfect relationship, as evidenced by “‘Tis Seasons since the Dimpled War” (Fr1551/1881), a poem cited in Dickinson scholarship as a war between female friends (Smith, , 39), or about the American Civil War. Cody Marrs argues that by “joining bloodshed with blushing,” this poem might intimate that “the North and South were both ‘conquerors’ in an irrational fratricide whose absent ‘Formula’ cannot be found” (Marrs, , 145). One needs to note the reminiscent tone in which the speaker fondly recalls the “Dimpled War” that happened long ago, specifically, “we each were Conqueror / And each of us were slain.” That both are “Conqueror[s]” means neither is victimized.…”