Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster

di Steven Biel (Autore)

WW Norton & Co, 1997

"I suggest, henceforth, when a woman talks women's rights, she be answered with the word Titanic, nothing more-just Titanic," wrote a St. Louis man to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was not alone in mining the ship for a metaphor. Everyone found ammunition in the Titanic-suffragists and their opponents; radicals, reformers, and capitalists; critics of technology and modern life; racists and xenophobes and champions of racial and ethnic equality; editorial writers and folk singers, preachers and poets. Protestant sermons used the Titanic to condemn the budding consumer society ("We know the end of . . . the undisturbed sensualists. As they sail the sea of life we know absolutely that their ship will meet disaster."). African American toasts and working-class ballads made the ship emblematic of the foolishness of white people and the greed of the rich. A 1950s revival framed the disaster as an "older kind of disaster in which people had time to die." An ever-increasing number of Titanic buffs find heroism and order in the tale. Still in the headlines ("Titanic Baby Found Alive!" the Weekly World News declares) and a figure of everyday speech ("rearranging deck chairs . . ."), the Titanic disaster echoes within a richly diverse, paradoxical, and fascinating America.

• Autore: Steven Biel
• Editore: WW Norton & Co
• Anno: 1997
• Rilegatura: Paperback / softback
• Pagine: 320 p.
• Dimensioni: 211 x 140 mm
• Peso: 398 gr.
• EAN: 9780393316766

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