Clica una miniatura per anar a Google Books.
S'està carregant… Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and Rebellion on a Virginia Plantationde Rhys Isaac
Cap S'està carregant…
Apunta't a LibraryThing per saber si aquest llibre et pot agradar. No hi ha cap discussió a Converses sobre aquesta obra. Sense ressenyes | afegeix-hi una ressenya
PremisDistincions
Landon Carter, a Virginia planter, left behind one of the most revealing of all American diaries. In this astonishingly rich biography, Isaac mines this remarkable document--and many other sources--to reconstruct Carter's interior world as it plunged into revolution. The aging patriarch, though a fierce supporter of American liberty, was deeply troubled by the rebellion and its threat to established order. His diary, originally a record of plantation business, began to fill with angry stories of revolt in his own little kingdom. Carter writes at white heat, his words sputtering from his pen as he documents the terrible rupture that the Revolution meant to him. Indeed, Carter felt in his heart that he was chronicling a world in decline, the passing of the order that his revered father had bequeathed to him. Not only had Landon's king betrayed his subjects, but Landon's own household betrayed him: his son showed insolent defiance, his daughter Judith eloped with a forbidden suitor, all of his slaves conspired constantly, and eight of them made an armed exodus to freedom. The seismic upheaval he helped to start had crumbled the foundations of Carter's own home. In Landon Carter's Uneasy Kingdom Rhys Isaac unfolds not only the life, but also the mental world of our countrymen in a long-distant time. Moreover, in this presentation of Landon Carter's passionate narratives, the diarist becomes an arresting new character in the world's literature, a figure of Shakespearean proportions, the Lear of his own tragic kingdom. This long-awaited work will be seen both as a major contribution to Revolution history and a triumph of the art of biography. No s'han trobat descripcions de biblioteca. |
Debats actualsCapCobertes populars
Google Books — S'està carregant… GèneresClassificació Decimal de Dewey (DDC)975.52302092History and Geography North America Southeastern U.S. VirginiaLCC (Clas. Bibl. Congrés EUA)ValoracióMitjana:
Ets tu?Fes-te Autor del LibraryThing. |
Landon Carter is far from a sympathetic figure. Petulant, pompous, misogynistic, and often mean-spirited, Carter hardly fits the stereotype of a proper founding father. Especially galling is the brutality that Carter so casually inflicted on the hundreds of slaves living and working on his sprawling plantation. Though Isaac occasionally suggests that condemnation of Carter’s behavior regarding his slaves is anachronistic, excusing the old planter as simply a “man of his times” is unacceptable. For his “people,” as Carter euphemistically referred to his slaves, his governance was a veritable reign of terror. Threats, blows, whipping of the bare skin of both male and females, shackles, and “heels to neck” roping were all routine occurrences on Landon Carter’s plantation. Almost as offensive as his shocking cruelty were his smug self-justifications. “I have no kind of Severity in the least to accuse myself of to one of them,” Carter confided to his diary after one flogging. “but on the contrary a behaviour on my part that should have taught them gratitude if there ever was a virtue of the sort in such creatures.” (p. 34).
Yet, Carter was, in a sense, a founding father. As a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1763 he vigorously protested the imposition of the Stamp Act. He boldly and consistently denied Parliament’s right to legislate in the colonies’ internal affairs. Carter, however, could never embrace the movement for independence. Even as he cheered the successes (often misreported) of Washington’s army in the field, he continued to insist that the purpose of the war was to secure the constitutional rights of the colonists within the British Empire. Until his death in 1778, Carter, the patriarch of Sabine Hall, clung tenaciously to the old patriarchal order of the Empire, even as it was crumbling around him.
While the old political order was disintegrating, Carter perceived that his “parental” authority on the plantation was crumbling as well. Not only were his slaves growing increasingly recalcitrant, but also to Carter’s great dismay, eight of them had escaped to link up with the British, who were promising freedom for slaves who joined the royal cause. Furthermore, as Carter grew older his children were becoming more and more defiant and disrespectful, leaving the old grandee increasingly frustrated by what he believed were vicious assaults on his patriarchal authority.
It is on this point, intriguing though it may be, that Isaac sometimes runs into trouble. His incessant attempts to draw a parallel between Carter’s troubled home life and the changes brought about by the Revolution grow rather labored. Nearly every description (and there are a great many) of a dispute between master and slave or father and son is followed by an analogous reference to the break between America and her political “father” across the Atlantic.
Isaac also can’t seem to resist injecting himself into the narrative from time to time. From an autobiographical sketch in the preface that would have been more appropriate on the book’s jacket, to an occasional superfluous “I think,” Isaac seems to want to remind the reader that there is, after all, a Pulitzer Prize winner at the controls.
These minor criticisms aside, Isaac has provided a profound insight not only into the mercurial and troubling psyche of one man, but also into the revolutionary world in which he lived. ( )