Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen [Lingua inglese] - Brossura

Garman, Bryan K.

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0807848662 ISBN 13: 9780807848661

Casa editrice: Univ of North Carolina Pr, 2000

Riassunto

When Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass in 1855, he dreamed of inspiring a "race of singers" who would celebrate the working class and realize the promise of American democracy. By examining how singers such as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen both embraced and reconfigured Whitman's vision, Bryan Garman shows that Whitman succeeded. In doing so, Garman celebrates the triumphs yet also exposes the limitations of Whitman's legacy.

While Whitman's verse propounded notions of sexual freedom and renounced the competitiveness of capitalism, it also safeguarded the interests of the white workingman, often at the expense of women and people of color. Garman describes how each of Whitman's successors adopted the mantle of the working-class hero while adapting the role to his own generation's concerns: Guthrie condemned racism in the 1930s, Dylan addressed race and war in the 1960s, and Springsteen explored sexism, racism, and homophobia in the 1980s and 1990s.

But as Garman points out, even the Boss, like his forebears, tends to represent solidarity in terms of white male bonding and homosocial allegiance. We can hear America singing in the voices of these artists, Garman says, but it is still the song of a white, male America.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Bryan K. Garman, who received his Ph.D. from Emory University, is chair of the history department at the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

Dalla seconda/terza di copertina:

Based on Walt Whitman's notion of a "race of singers" who would unite and celebrate the working class, Bryan Garman reveals how this prescient vision was realized in the form of such singers as Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Woody Guthrie and in the late 20th century whose image and lyrics embody and celebrate an exclusively white male working class America.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of North Carolina Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0807848662
• ISBN 13: 9780807848661
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 338