The following text field will produce suggestions that follow it as you type.

River Of Dreams by Thomas Ruys Smith, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Compare River Of Dreams by Thomas Ruys Smith, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Thomas Ruys Smith

$60.95

Even in the decades before Mark Twain enthralled the world with his evocative representations of the Mississippi, the river played an essential role in American culture and consciousness. Throughout the antebellum era, the Mississippi acted as a powerful symbol of America's conception of itself - and the world's conception of America. As Twain understood, "The Mississippi is well worth reading about." Thomas Ruys Smith's River of Dreams is an examination of the Mississippi's role in the antebellum imagination, exploring its cultural position in literature, art, thought, and national life. Presidents, politicians, authors, poets, painters, and international celebrities of every variety experienced the Mississippi in its Golden Age. They left an extraordinary collection of representations of the river in their wake, images that evolved as America itself changed. From Thomas Jefferson's vision for the Mississippi to Andrew Jackson and the rowdy river culture of the early nineteenth century, Smith charts the Mississippi's shifting importance in the making of the nation. He examines the accounts of European travelers, including Frances Trollope, Charles Dickens, and William Makepeace Thackeray, whose views of the river were heavily influenced by the world of the steamboat and plantation slavery. Smith discusses the growing importance of visual representations of the Mississippi as the antebellum period progressed, exploring the ways in which views of the river, particularly giant moving panoramas that toured the world, echoed notions of manifest destiny and the westward movement. He evokes the river in the late antebellum years as a place of crime and mystery, especially in popular writing, and most notably in Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man. An epilogue discusses the Mississippi during the Civil War, when possession of the river became vital, symbolically as well as militarily. The epilogue also provides an introduction to Mark Twain, a product of the antebellum river world who was to resurrect its imaginative potential for a post-war nation and produce an iconic Mississippi that still flows through a wide and fertile floodplain in American literature. From empire building in the Louisiana Purchase to the trauma of the Civil War, the Mississippi's dominant symbolic meanings tracked the essential forces operating within the nation. As Smith shows in this groundbreaking work, the story of the imagined Mississippi River is the story of antebellum America itself. | River Of Dreams by Thomas Ruys Smith, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Compare similar products to Thomas Ruys Smith

River of Dreams by Thomas Ruys Smith, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River of Dreams by Thomas Ruys Smith, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $47.95
River Of Dreams by Hudson Talbott, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River Of Dreams by Hudson Talbott, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $25.99
River of Dreams by Wildwood Dean, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River of Dreams by Wildwood Dean, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $25.95
There Is A River by Thomas Sugrue, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

There Is A River by Thomas Sugrue, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $42.69
Sea Of Dreams by Susan Sallis, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

Sea Of Dreams by Susan Sallis, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $15.99
Dreamonition by Thomas P Howie, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

Dreamonition by Thomas P Howie, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $51.99
River Of The Gods by Candice Millard, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River Of The Gods by Candice Millard, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $42.50
There Is A River by Thomas Sugrue, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

There Is A River by Thomas Sugrue, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $29.81
River Of Dark Dreams by Walter Johnson, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River Of Dark Dreams by Walter Johnson, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $36.00
Day Dreams by John Kingston James, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

Day Dreams by John Kingston James, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $34.76
River of Diamonds by S M Isaac, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River of Diamonds by S M Isaac, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $13.99
Christmas Past by Thomas Ruys Smith, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

Christmas Past by Thomas Ruys Smith, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $53.95
Hold On to Your Dreams by Ruskin Bond, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

Hold On to Your Dreams by Ruskin Bond, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $20.99
River of Memories by David L Thompson, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

River of Memories by David L Thompson, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $31.19
Dreamonition by Thomas P Howie, Paperback | Indigo Chapters
Loading Inventory...

Dreamonition by Thomas P Howie, Paperback | Indigo Chapters

Coles

Current price: $30.49
Powered by Adeptmind