The Corporate Forms of Antebellum US Literature

Through close examination of legal and literary texts, The Corporate Forms of Antebellum US Literature tells the story of the corporation in antebellum US law, literature, and culture. It unfolds a rich and varied corporate imaginary that both illuminates the prehistory of today's corporations and captures forgotten and unrealized conceptions of personhood, politics, and collectivity. Centered on an era during which both person and corporation were contested terms, this book shows how a seemingly instrumental legal category spurred reflection on human identity, mortality and immortality, slavery and freedom, and the possibilities of social and political belonging.

In the wake of 'Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819)', the corporation was recognized as a flexible and powerful form for enterprises ranging from banks to mutual aid societies to utopian communities, even as its status as a legal person spurred reflection on natural and artificial personhood. Antebellum American writers took on corporate personhood and reframed it as literary personification; they explored and reimagined the tropes at the heart of the legal doctrine of the corporation, including artificiality, immortality, multiplicity, and succession; and they experimented with social and literary forms derived from the corporation.

By examining the ways writers theorized, figured, and deployed the corporate form within and beyond the law, this study both elucidates dominant conceptions of the corporation and reveals a multitude of paths not taken. It wagers that attending to the corporation as a form—or collection of forms—at the intersection of antebellum US law, literature, and culture can both inform our contemporary entanglements with the corporation and bring an unfamiliar perspective to recent debates about form.