{"product_id":"9781572336209","title":"Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003eLiberator? Madman? Genius? Martyr?  John Brown achieved immediate and\u003cbr\u003elasting notoriety through his attempt to foment an armed insurrection among\u003cbr\u003eblack slaves in 1859, an event that many believed hastened the outbreak of\u003cbr\u003ethe U.S. Civil War. From the moment of his capture at Harper's Ferry,\u003cbr\u003eVirginia, there have been widely varying interpretations of the man and his\u003cbr\u003emotivations. Sometimes depicted as the grim conscience of a nation whose\u003cbr\u003efounding proclaimed the equality of all people, sometimes portrayed as a\u003cbr\u003eterrorist more devoted to his own martyrdom than to his cause, Brown has\u003cbr\u003ebeen a source of inspiration, fascination, and frustration for some of the\u003cbr\u003ecountry's greatest writers and artists.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this absorbing book, Bruce Ronda examines the representations of Brown\u003cbr\u003echronologically, ranging from Thoreau's “Plea for Captain John Brown”-with\u003cbr\u003eits ardent defense of Brown as a patriot, Transcendentalist, and true New\u003cbr\u003eEnglander-through treatments by anonymous southern writers and well-known\u003cbr\u003eauthors such as John Greenleaf Whittier, Herman Melville, Richard Henry\u003cbr\u003eDana, Frederick Douglass, William Dean Howells, and Edwin Arlington\u003cbr\u003eRobinson. Ronda then considers the major treatments of Brown in the early to\u003cbr\u003emid-twentieth century by W. E. B. DuBois, Stephen Vincent Benet, and Robert\u003cbr\u003ePenn Warren. Of particular interest are discussions of a 1930s poem by\u003cbr\u003eMuriel Rukeyser, Truman Nelson's 1960 novel The Surveyor, and artwork by\u003cbr\u003eJacob Lawrence. He concludes with studies of novels by three contemporary\u003cbr\u003eauthors: Russell Banks, Michelle Cliff, and Bruce Olds.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eReading the Old Man challenges the assumption that literature about Brown\u003cbr\u003efalls predictably into two camps-celebration or outrage-either defending\u003cbr\u003eBrown as liberator and martyr or vilifying him as a traitor, incendiary, and\u003cbr\u003emadman.  Instead, Ronda discovers a variety of approaches and reveals\u003cbr\u003esubtler, more complex portraits, even comparing Brown's fervor to that of\u003cbr\u003etoday's religious terrorists.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBruce Ronda is professor and chair of the Department of English at Colorado\u003cbr\u003eState University. He is the author of Intellect and Spirit: The Life and\u003cbr\u003eWorks of Robert Coles and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: A Reformer on Her Own\u003cbr\u003eTerms. He is the editor of The Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody: American\u003cbr\u003eRenaissance Woman.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Tennessee Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47055671918832,"sku":"9781572336209","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781572336209_p0.jpg?v=1763793639","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781572336209","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}