Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820–1860Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism

Abstract

Book Review| September 01 2021 Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820–1860Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820–1860. By Burnett, Katharine A., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press. 2019. xi, 266 pp. Cloth, $49.95.Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism. By Brown, Nicholas. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press. 2019. x, 219 pp. Cloth, $99.95; paper, $25.95; e-book available. Christopher Bundrick Christopher Bundrick Christopher Bundrick is an associate professor of English at the University of South Carolina Lancaster. His research focuses on southern regionalism, and he is the author of essays about Thomas Nelson Page, Mary Murfree, Charles Chesnutt, and Elliott White Springs. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google American Literature (2021) 93 (3): 531–533. https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-9361335 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Christopher Bundrick; Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820–1860Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism. American Literature 1 September 2021; 93 (3): 531–533. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-9361335 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsAmerican Literature Search Advanced Search Katharine A. Burnett opens Cavaliers and Economists with the premise that southern literature developed “in tandem with economic modernization—not in spite of it” (4). She goes on to suggest that, even as early as the 1830s, southern literary efforts “developed in resistance to shifts in an emerging capitalist system and used those shifts to rationalize slavery and southern society as it existed” (4). Burnett’s work is clearly influenced by recent attempts to approach southern studies through a global lens, yet her insistence that earlier southern literature embraces, rather than resists, global capitalism becomes especially interesting when she suggests that nineteenth-century southern writers used “the language of economics . . . to reframe mainstream representations of the region through popular literary forms and genres that proliferated in the early-nineteenth century transatlantic literary culture” (9). Hinting at a similarity between capitalist systems’ use of the marketplace to generate and sustain economic values... Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.