Louisa S. Mccord’s Caius Gracchus: A Transatlantic Southern Literary Response to 1848 European Revolutions

Louisa S. McCord is the most important female intellectual in the antebellum South and one of its most recognized voices, even if her name rarely appears in studies not directly related to her region. McCord has a parallel, according to Mary Kelley, in Margaret Fuller, the relevant prewar Northern i...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Manuel Cuenca, Carme
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2016
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/57940
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/11441/57940
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Louisa S. McCord
1848 European Revolutions
Southern women writing
Drama
Classical myths
Caius Gracchus
Cordelia
Revoluciones europeas de 1848
Escritura de mujeres sureñas
Mitos clásicos
Descripción
Sumario:Louisa S. McCord is the most important female intellectual in the antebellum South and one of its most recognized voices, even if her name rarely appears in studies not directly related to her region. McCord has a parallel, according to Mary Kelley, in Margaret Fuller, the relevant prewar Northern intellectual and essayist. From contrasting ideological positions, both left testimony of their interest in constructing a model of womanhood, capable of facing the contingencies of their times. Born in one of the most influential families of South Carolina, McCord produced a phenomenal synthesis of the conservative political, economic and religious arguments accepted in her times and managed to transform them into a coherent philosophy that stood as a firm foundation for a society based on slave labor and a rigid social hierarchy. With her political writings and especially with her tragedy Caius Gracchus, McCord shows that she was not only interested in Southern politics but, most important, in the possible consequences of European political upheavals, and specifically in the influence that the European Revolutions of 1848 could exert in American territories. Her play is then a revealing testimony of the involvement of Southern women in post-1848 transnational political debates.