{"product_id":"the-story-of-a-patricia-crain-9780804731751","title":"The Story of A: The Alphabetization of America from the New England Primer to the Scarlet Letter","description":"\u003cp\u003eRichly illustrated with often antic images from alphabet books and primers, \u003ci\u003eThe Story of A\u003c\/i\u003e relates the history of the alphabet as a genre of text for children and of alphabetization as a social practice in America, from early modern reading primers to the literature of the American Renaissance.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eOffering a poetics of alphabetization and explicating the alphabet's tropes and rhetorical strategies, the author demonstrates the far-reaching cultural power of such apparently neutral statements as \"A is for apple.\" The new market for children's books in the eighteenth century established for the \"republic of ABC\" a cultural potency equivalent to its high-culture counterpart, the \"republic of letters,\" while shaping its child-readers into consumers. As a central rite of socialization, alphabetization schooled children to conflicting expectations, as well as to changing models of authority, understandings of the world, and uses of literature.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn the nineteenth century, literacy became a crucial aspect of American middle-class personality and subjectivity. Furnishing the readers and writers needed for a national literature, the alphabetization of America between 1800 and 1850 informed the sentimental-reform novel as well as the self-consciously aesthetic novel of the 1850s. Through readings of conduct manuals, reading primers, and a sentimental bestseller, the author shows how the alphabet became embedded in a maternal narrative, which organized the world through domestic affections.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNathaniel Hawthorne, by contrast, insisted on the artificiality of the alphabet and its practices in his antimimetic, hermetic \u003ci\u003eThe Scarlet Letter\u003c\/i\u003e, with its insistent focus on the letter A. By understanding this novel as part of the network of alphabetization, \u003ci\u003eThe Story of A\u003c\/i\u003e accounts for its uniquely persistent cultural role. The author concludes, in an epilogue, with a reading of postmodern alphabets and their implications for the future of literacy.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Patricia Crain\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0804731756\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780804731751\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Stanford University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/16\/2002\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 315\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.87lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.74h x 6.10w x 0.81d","brand":"Patricia Crain","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43947214930175,"sku":"9780804731751","price":38.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_3de363a6-97db-4ec1-8a24-9b67ea949dac.jpg?v=1681517406","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/the-story-of-a-patricia-crain-9780804731751","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}