Kathleen Diffley, The Fateful Lightning: Civil War Stories and the Magazine Marketplace, 1861–1876 Article Swipe
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· 2023
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajad080
· OA: W4385857098
The Civil War caused millions of Americans to travel far for the first time.Soldiers formed the largest groups on the move, but thousands of others left home too.Refugees took to the roads seeking safety and shelter.Thousands stepped toward freedom.The war's unprecedented suffering and mass exodus inspired humanitarian groups to descend from the North and open hospitals and schools in the South.All these crowds attracted traveling sutlers who spotted an opportunity to hawk food, clothing, conveyance, and entertainment to people on the go.For years, folks who had known little beyond their county line engaged with different people, participated in extraordinary events, and experienced strange places.As the vastness and diversity of a continental nation opened before them, some minds opened too.When antebellum parochialisms dissolved, Americans craved fiction that testified to this transformative moment and explained it.In The Fateful Lightning: Civil War Stories and the Magazine Marketplace, 1861-1876, Kathleen Diffley explores how literary journals beyond the Northeast told stories that reflected the unpredictable expanse of the nation and war.By focusing on narrative innovations, vitalities, subjects, and silences, The Fateful Lightning considers how postwar fiction from the south, midwest, and west challenged New England's predominance in American letters.Diffley's analysis of regional magazines toggles between close readings of texts and distant readings of contexts.This twinned view of US storytelling after the war helps to explain how a regional voice like Mark Twain's could become national, whereas a previously national voice like Nathaniel Hawthorne's sounded regional after Appomattox.
