Spectacular distractions : P.T. Barnum and the birth of American literary modernism

Abstract

Browsing a copy of the New York Times on March 24, 1885, readers would probably not have dwelt with much seriousness on one particular article they found inside: a report of P. T. Barnum’s latest extravaganza, staged the previous evening at Madison Square Garden. As will become clear, however, despite the article’s obvious purpose as light-hearted filler it serves as a prescient and perhaps surprising entry point into the arguments about the origins of literary modernism that this essay stakes out. “Spectators Crowding Around The Three Circus Rings And Curiosities,” the article’s headline announces, and it continues