The Fall and Rise of Lew Wallace: Gaining Legitimacy Through Popular Culture

Now showing item 419 of 1238

Title:	The Fall and Rise of Lew Wallace: Gaining Legitimacy Through Popular Culture
Author:	Lighty, Shaun Chandler
Description:	As a lawyer, soldier, and politician, Lew Wallace epitomized the nineteenth-century ideals of manhood. Yet a series of professional failures prompted Wallace to turn to writing as a way to reconstitute his identity. The century’s best-selling novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, was the result. The questions Wallace explored in Ben-Hur about the historic reality of Christianity also resonated with the popular religiosity of Americans eager to experience faith vicariously. Aided by the late nineteenth-century mass-market machinery that propelled his novel to commercial success, Wallace became a popular authority on secular and religious matters by deriving definition and legitimacy from his audiences. Scholars generally omit Wallace and Ben-Hur from current historiography, yet both reveal important insights into late nineteenth-century American culture regarding manhood, popular religiosity, and celebrity.
Permanent Link:	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1130790468 http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/18991
Date:	2005

Files in this item

Files	Size	Format	View
There are no files associated with this item.

Now showing item 419 of 1238