Romantic Education in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

<p>American publishing in the long nineteenth century was flooded with readers, primers, teaching-training manuals, children’s literature, and popular periodicals aimed at families. These publications attest to an abiding faith in the power of pedagogy that has its roots in transatlantic Romantic conceptions of pedagogy and literacy. </p><p>The essays in this collection examine the on-going influence of Romanticism in the long nineteenth century on American thinking about education, as depicted in literary texts, in historical accounts of classroom dynamics, or in pedagogical treatises. They also point out that though this influence was generally progressive, the benefits of this social change did not reach many parts of American society. This book is therefore an important reference for scholars of Romantic studies, American studies, historical pedagogy and education. </p> <p>Introduction <i>Monika M. Elbert and Lesley Ginsberg</i> <strong>Part I: Transcendental Education</strong> 1. Romantic Reform and Boys: Bronson Alcott’s Materialist Pedagogy <i>Ken Parille and Anne Mallory</i> 2. Teaching Transcendentalism in Elizabeth Palmer Peabody’s <i>Aesthetic Papers</i> <i>Ricardo Miguel Alfonso</i> 3. Educating Jo March: Plumfield, Romanticism, and the Tomboy Trajectory in the Alcott Trilogy <i>Kristen Proehl</i> 4. Imagination and Apocalypse: Christopher Cranch’s Novels for Young Readers <i>Bruce Ronda</i> <strong>Part II: Romantic Education: Origins and Legacies</strong> 5. Susanna Rowson and Early Romantic Pedagogies <i>Lorinda B. Cohoon</i> 6. Puppetmasters and Their Toys: Transformation of <i>Tabula</i> <i>Rasa</i> in Tales of Hoffmann, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Baum <i>Holly Blackford</i> 7. Storytelling and the Law: Performance Pedagogy in the Novels of E.D.E.N. Southworth <i>Joyce Warren</i> 8. ‘What has the artist done about it?’: Jane Addams, Educational Reform, and the Work of Art <i>Anne Bruder</i> <strong>Part III: Race and Romantic Pedagogies </strong>9. Race and Romantic Pedagogies in the Works of Lydia Maria Child <i>Lesley Ginsberg</i> 10. Rhetoric or Romance? Opposition and Progress in Frederick Douglass’s Re-Presentations of Literacy <i>Wendy Ryden</i> 11. Upholding and Subverting Didacticism: Antislavery Iconography and the Abolitionist Poetry of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper <i>Valerie D. Levy</i> 12. The ‘Indian Problem’ in Elaine Goodale Eastman’s Authorship: Gender and Racial Identity Tensions Unsettling a Romantic Pedagogy <i>Sarah Ruffing Robbins</i> <strong>Part IV: Romantic Pedagogies and the Resistant Child</strong> 13. Engendering Fantasy in Romantic Children’s Fiction <i>Derek Pacheco </i>14. Nineteenth-Century Pedagogies of Unruly Childhood: Emerson, Hawthorne, Stowe, Alcott, Twain <i>Carol Singley</i> 15. Lessons Learned: Genre and Paternal Desire in Martha Finley’s <i>Elsie Dinsmore</i> Series <i>Allison Giffen</i> 16. Narratives of Teaching and Disability in Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature <i>Monika M. Elbert</i></p>