{"product_id":"9781587295935","title":"E Pluribus Unum: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Constitutional Paradox","description":"“Out of many, one.” But how do the many become one without sacrificing difference or autonomy? This problem was critical to both identity formation and state formation in late 18th- and 19th-century America. The premise of this book is that American writers of the time came to view the resolution of this central philosophical problem as no longer the exclusive province of legislative or judicial documents but capable of being addressed by literary texts as well.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The project of \u003ci\u003eE Pluribus Unum\u003c\/i\u003e is twofold. Its first and underlying concern is the general philosophic problem of the one and the many as it came to be understood at the time. W. C. Harris supplies a detailed account of the genealogy of the concept, exploring both its applications and its paradoxes as a basis for state and identity formation.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Harris then considers the perilous integration of the one and the many as a motive in the major literary accomplishments of 19th-century U.S. writers. Drawing upon critical as well as historical resources and upon contexts as diverse as cosmology, epistemology, poetics, politics, and Bible translation, he discusses attempts by Poe, Whitman, Melville, and William James to resolve the problems of social construction caused by the paradox of e pluribus unum by writing literary and philosophical texts that supplement the nation’s political founding documents.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Poe (\u003ci\u003eEureka\u003c\/i\u003e), Whitman (\u003ci\u003eLeaves of Grass\u003c\/i\u003e), Melville (\u003ci\u003eBilly Budd\u003c\/i\u003e), and William James (\u003ci\u003eThe Varieties of Religious Experience\u003c\/i\u003e) provide their own distinct, sometimes contradictory resolutions to the conflicting demands of diversity and unity, equality and hierarchy. Each of these texts understands literary and philosophical writing as having the potential to transform-conceptually or actually-the construction of social order.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e This work will be of great interest to literary and constitutional scholars.","brand":"University of Iowa Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47184061071600,"sku":"9781587295935","price":35.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781587295935_p0.jpg?v=1763806259","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781587295935","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}