We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,545,972.70 | Books Available: 800,432 | Members Online: 114

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Children of the Earth: Literature, Politics, and Nationhood

Children of the Earth Literature Politics and Nationhood
Author: Marc Shell

Winner of a MacArthur Foundation grant (popularly known as the "genius award"), Marc Shell has emerged as one of the most innovative and powerful thinkers of our times. As Stanley Cavell of Harvard University has written, "Marc Shell's originality of mind and his radical depth of learning are astounding, compelling, like a force of nature. The w... more »orld looks different after an encounter with the seriousness and fruitfulness of his mind." In works such as Money, Language, Thought and The End of Kinship, he demonstrated his ability to draw profound insights about society and culture out of diverse strands of the human experience. Now, in Children of the Earth, he goes further, in a provocative look at the relationship between kinship and nationhood in Western culture. Children of the Earth provides a powerful new reassessment of the ways in which we have defined ourselves--in terms of race, nationality, blood relations, and the Family of Humankind--by exploring the dangers and contradictions inherent in them all. Shell ranges far and wide through Western culture to call into question many of our basic assumptions. Like the child in the story of Solomon's Judgment, he writes, we could all be changelings, switched in the cradle--and there is no unshakeable answer to the question of who are our true parents. By breaking down the most basic concept of group identity (the family), Shell opens a detailed re-examination of the emergence of social and political ideologies in Western culture. He analyzes a number of important and revealing texts from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. For instance, he looks at Hamlet to explore the origins of the modern idea of the nation; he discusses Queen Elizabeth I's little known poem Mirror of the Soul as an important source on the interplay between incest, politics, and religious theories of the Reformation; and he reads Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson in an examination of how the phenomenon of Siamese twins (the only people who can be sure they are related) helped define familial, racial, and national ideologies in the nineteenth century United States. In an analysis that ranges from imperial Rome to the Spanish Inquisition, from the Amsterdam of Spinoza to Nazi Germany, Shell illuminates the interplay of kinship, race, and national identity. By drawing startling connections between seemingly unrelated elements of history, ideology, and literature, he forever changes the way we think about who we are.

ISBN-13: 9780195068641
ISBN-10: 0195068645
Publication Date: 6/24/1993
Pages: 353
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Children of the Earth: Literature, Politics, and Nationhood

Loading...