163 records matched your query       

Author:

Cook, Sylvia Jenkins, 1943- author.

Title:

Clothed in meaning : literature, labor, and cotton in nineteenth-century America / Sylvia Jenkins Cook.

Publisher:

University of Michigan Press,

Copyright Date:

2020

Description:

309 pages ; 24 cm

Subject:

1800-1899
American literature--19th century--History and criticism.
Working class authors--United States--History--19th century.
Textile workers--United States--Social conditions--19th century.
Cotton trade--United States--History--19th century.
Clothing trade--United States--History--19th century.
Working class women in literature.
Freed persons--United States--Social conditions--19th century.
Working class women in literature.
Cotton trade.
Clothing trade.
Freed persons--Social conditions.
Textile workers--Social conditions
Working class authors
United States
History

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-302) and index.

Contents:

The material of expression. A metaphor-making argument -- "Think what I have felt": William Grimes -- "Tricked out": dress and nakedness -- Strong spheres and elegant arts: the 'real presence' of slaves in Stowe's Dred -- The empire of fashion and the empire of cotton -- "The ebony pen of an ambitious lady": the coiffeuse and the modiste -- "Depth of thought and flights of eloquence": epics of cotton -- Conclusion. The material of expression.

Summary:

"The rise of both the empire of cotton and the empire of fashion in the nineteenth century brought new opportunities for sartorial self-expression to millions of ordinary people who could now afford to dress in style and assert their physical presence. Millions of laborers toiling in cotton field and producing cotton cloth in industrial mills faced a brutal reality of exploitation, servitude, and regimentation, yet they also had a profound desire to express their selfhood. Another transformative force of this era, the rise of literary publication and the radical extension of literacy to the working class, opened an avenue for them to do so. Cloth and clothing provide potent tropes not only for the physical but also for intellectual forms of self-expression. The rise of both the empire of cotton and the empire of fashion in the nineteenth century brought new opportunities for sartorial self-expression to millions of ordinary people who could now afford to dress in style and assert their physical presence. Millions of laborers toiling in cotton field and producing cotton cloth in industrial mills faced a brutal reality of exploitation, servitude, and regimentation, yet they also had a profound desire to express their selfhood. Another transformative force of this era, the rise of literary publication and the radical extension of literacy to the working class, opened an avenue for them to do so. Cloth and clothing provide potent tropes not only for the physical but also for intellectual forms of self-expression"-- Provided by publisher

Series:

Class : culture

ISBN:

0472131966
9780472131969

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1117630227

Locations:

OVUX522 -- University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)