TY  - GEN
N2  - Condemned to hang after his raid on Harper's Ferry, John Brown prophesied that the crimes of a slave-holding land would be purged away only with blood. A study of omens, maledictions, and inspired invocations, The Oracle and the Curse examines how utterances such as Brown's shaped American literature between the Revolution and the Civil War. In nineteenth-century criminal trials, judges played the role of law's living oracles, but offenders were also given an opportunity to address the public. When the accused began to turn the tables on their judges, they did so not through rational arguments but by calling down a divine retribution. Widely circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, these curses appeared to channel an otherworldly power, condemning an unjust legal system and summoning readers to the side of righteousness. Exploring the modes of address that communicated the authority of law and the dictates of conscience in antebellum America's court of public opinion, Caleb Smith offers a new poetics of justice which assesses the nonrational influence that these printed confessions, trial reports, and martyr narratives exerted on their first audiences. Smith shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.
DO  - 10.4159/harvard.9780674075849
DO  - doi
AB  - Condemned to hang after his raid on Harper's Ferry, John Brown prophesied that the crimes of a slave-holding land would be purged away only with blood. A study of omens, maledictions, and inspired invocations, The Oracle and the Curse examines how utterances such as Brown's shaped American literature between the Revolution and the Civil War. In nineteenth-century criminal trials, judges played the role of law's living oracles, but offenders were also given an opportunity to address the public. When the accused began to turn the tables on their judges, they did so not through rational arguments but by calling down a divine retribution. Widely circulated in newspapers and pamphlets, these curses appeared to channel an otherworldly power, condemning an unjust legal system and summoning readers to the side of righteousness. Exploring the modes of address that communicated the authority of law and the dictates of conscience in antebellum America's court of public opinion, Caleb Smith offers a new poetics of justice which assesses the nonrational influence that these printed confessions, trial reports, and martyr narratives exerted on their first audiences. Smith shows how writers portrayed struggles for justice as clashes between human law and higher authority, giving voice to a moral protest that transformed American literature.
T1  - The Oracle and the Curse :A Poetics of Justice from the Revolution to the Civil War /
AU  - Smith, Caleb,
JF  - E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2013
JF  - E-BOOK PACKAGE LITERATURE 2013
JF  - E-BOOK PAKET LITERATURWISSENSCHAFT  2013
JF  - HUP Complete eBook Package 2011-2014
JF  - HUP eBook Package 2013
JF  - HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
JF  - HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2014
JF  - HUP eBook Package Backlist 2000-2015
EP  - ZDB-23-DGG
EP  - ZDB-23-DLW
CN  - PS169.L37
LA  - eng
LA  - In English.
ID  - 1479241
KW  - American literature
KW  - Law and literature
KW  - Social justice in literature.
KW  - HISTORY / United States / 19th Century.
KW  - HISTORY / United States / Revolutionary Period (1775-1800).
KW  - LAW / Legal History.
KW  - POLITICAL SCIENCE / History & Theory.
KW  - LITERARY CRITICISM / American / General.
SN  - 9780674075849
TI  - The Oracle and the Curse :A Poetics of Justice from the Revolution to the Civil War /
LK  - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780674075849
UR  - https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://univsouthin.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780674075849
ER  -