{"title":"William Merrill Decker","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"geographies-of-flight-book-william-merrill-decker-9780810142329","title":"Geographies of Flight","description":"African American writing commonly represents New World topography as a set of entrapments, contesting the open horizons, westward expansion, and individual freedom characteristic of the white, Eurocentric literary tradition. Geographies of Flight: Phillis Wheatley to Octavia Butler provides the first comprehensive treatment of the ways in which African American authors across three centuries have confronted the predicament of inhabiting space under conditions of bondage and structural oppression. William Merrill Decker examines how, in testifying to those conditions, fourteen black authors have sought to transform a national cartography that, well into the twenty-first century, reflects white supremacist assumptions. These writers question the spatial dimensions of a mythic American liberty and develop countergeographies in which descendants of the African diaspora lay claim to the America they have materially and culturally created.  Tracking the testimonial voice in a range of literary genres, Geographies of Flight explores themes of placement and mobility in the work of Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Octavia Butler.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49735837712657,"sku":"NGR9780810142329","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0810142325.jpg?v=1763483898"},{"product_id":"epistolary-practices-book-william-merrill-decker-9780807847435","title":"Epistolary Practices","description":"After offering an overview of the genre, Decker explores epistolary practices that coincide with American experiences of space, settlement, separation, and reunion. He discusses letters written by such well-known and well-educated persons as John Winthrop, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Samuel Clemens.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50763130601745,"sku":"CIN0807847437VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51416428347665,"sku":"CIN0807847437G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52086186049809,"sku":"GOR007835841","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52616031240465,"sku":"NLS9780807847435","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52740218028305,"sku":"NIN9780807847435","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0807847437.jpg?v=1763476143"},{"product_id":"literary-vocation-of-henry-adams-book-william-merrill-decker-9780807865293","title":"The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams","description":"In the mid-1880s, Henry Adams committed himself to a posture that has since been associated with his name: neglected patrician, doomsayer, literary man whose bereavement at his wife's suicide confirmed his abandonment of an active public life. Adams (1838-1918) defined himself as other than contemporary Americans. Yet he also cast himself as the Republic's last true patriot, and beneath his reticence lay the firm belief that he was the one man who could save America -- if only his voice were heard.  This insightful book focuses on the relationship between Adams and his audience, emphasizing Adams's rhetorical strategies in his effort to shape a dialogue with his readers. Throughout his literary career, Adams struggled to redefine America's role as a nation of millennial promise. All the while, he was faced with mounting evidence that his country was rapidly squandering its opportunity to act as a redemptive force. William Decker explores Adams's ambition to impress this view of the Republic on the national mind and his persistent desire to create a text that would direct, both by its rational persuasiveness and by its symbological appeal, the course of an America destined to become a great world power.  After his wife's suicide in 1885, Adams increasingly felt the burden of what he perceived as a historical and cosmic opposition to the millennial America in whose advocacy he had originally taken up his vocation. He revised his authorial ends and means, assuming ever more clearly the part of the voice crying in the wilderness. Although he would routinely despair of his country's public destiny, his pen would remain active as long as he lived, narrowly affirming the redemptive historical possibility.  The Literary Vocation of Henry Adams is a comprehensive reading of Adams's works, giving careful attention to texts that have generally been considered minor as well as to better-known works like U.S. histories and Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Discussions of Adams's most widely read and appreciated work, The Education of Henry Adams, frame Decker's arguments. He examines the Education as the valedictory statement and enactment of Adams's ambitions as an author--and as the ultimate measure of his success.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51150246117649,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51150248083729,"sku":"NIN9780807865293","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52400811933969,"sku":"NLS9780807865293","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0807818747.jpg?v=1763481276"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-william-merrill-decker.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}