Boeckmann links character, literary genre, and science, revealing how major literary works both contributed to and disrupted the construction of race in turn-of-the-century America.
In A Question of Character, Cathy Boeckmann establishes a strong link between racial questions and the development of literary traditions at the end of the 19th century in America. This period saw the rise of "scientific racism," which claimed that the races were distinguished not solely by exterior appearance but also by a set of inherited character traits. As Boeckmann explains, this emphasis on character meant that race was not only a thematic concern in the literature of the period but also a generic or formal one as well.
Boeckmann explores the intersections between race and literary history by tracing the language of character through both scientific and literary writing. Nineteenth-century pseudo-sciences such as phrenology and physiognomy had a vocabulary for discussing racial character that overlapped conceptually with the conventions for portraying race in literature. Through close readings of novels by Thomas Dixon, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, and James Weldon Johnson—each of which deals with a black character "passing" as white—Boeckmann shows how this emphasis on character relates to the shift from romantic and sentimental fiction to realism. Because each of these genres had very specific conventions regarding the representation of character, genres often dictated how races could be depicted.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"[The] discussions of Twain, Howells, Chesnutt, and Johnson . . . lucidly illustrate the ways that four of our major writers struggled to create literary forms enabling them not only to reflect but also to intervene in contemporary racial debates, and in the process to begin shifting the generic boundaries of American literature."
—American Literary Realism
"[A Question of Character] fills in significant gaps in the critical discourse about genre, race, and science at the turn of the century. . . . [The] introduction and first chapter are extremely useful for explicating how racial discourse in realism and sentimentalism helps determine genre. . . . [This book] should be required reading for scholars interested in early theories about scientific racism."
—Choice
About the Author
Catherine Ann Boeckmann,an independent scholar, is Communication Specialist at McKinsey & Company in Atlanta.
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