Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Civic Myths: A Law-and-Literature Approach to Citizenship

Civic Myths: A Law-and-Literature Approach to Citizenship

Thomas, Brook

Paperback

Series: Cultural Studies of the United States

Literary CriticismGeneral LawGeneral Political Science

ISBN10: 0807858463
ISBN13: 9780807858462
Publisher: Univ Of North Carolina Pr
Published: Oct 1 2007
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.76 Width: 5.69 Depth: 9.22
Language: English
As questions of citizenship generate new debates for this generation of Americans, Brook Thomas argues for revitalizing the role of literature in civic education. Thomas defines civic myths as compelling stories about national origin, membership, and values that are generated by conflicts within the concept of citizenship itself. Selected works of literature, he claims, work on these myths by challenging their terms at the same time that they work with them by relying on the power of narrative to produce compelling new stories.

Civic Myths consists of four case studies: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and the good citizen; Edward Everett Hale's The Man without a Country and the patriotic citizen; Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and the independent citizen; and Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men and the immigrant citizen. Thomas also provides analysis of the civic mythology surrounding Abraham Lincoln and the case of Ex parte Milligan. Engaging current debates about civil society, civil liberties, civil rights, and immigration, Thomas draws on the complexities of law and literature to probe the complexities of U.S. citizenship.

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All