Pin Things Down with Concrete Nouns |
"he hadn't really seen enough specimens to generalize" |
James Baldwin's critique of Uncle Tom's Cabin was centered on its use of "types," which "bind," which "deny"--"in its insistence that it is his categorization alone which is real." |
Jane Tompkins' celebration of the novel took precisely the opposite perspective: she also read all the characters as types, but affirmed Stowe for enlarging the scope of from (insignificant?) individual particularity to the universal-and-archetypal: |
reason | emotion |
free | enslaved |
white | black |
male | female |
North | South |
existential | sentimental |
doubting | believing |
skeptical | faithful |
Alfred | St. Clare |
Baldwin | Tompkins |
"Talk to the Hand," @ Hi-ReS! Feed | From Bladematrix-Medieval Weapons |