Title Emotional reinventions : realist-era representations beyond sympathy / Melanie V. Dawson

Published Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2015]

Click on the following:
JSTOR eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource (vi, 309 pages) Contents Introduction: Emotion on the Grid; 1. Howells, Sympathy, and the Problem of Scale; 2. Emotion and Representational Anxiety; 3. Backward Glances: The Search for Emotional Origins; 4. Cultivated Emotion: Race, the Body, and the Affectively Constituted Subject; 5. Competitive Feeling: Multifocal Fiction and Affective Blood Sport; Epilogue: The Work of Reinvention; Notes; Bibliography; Index Summary " Focusing on representational approaches to emotion during the years of American literary realism's dominance and in the works of such authors as Edith Wharton, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, W. D. Howells, Charles Chesnutt, and others, Emotional Reinventions: Realist-Era Representations Beyond Sympathy contends that emotional representations were central to the self-conscious construction of high realism (in the mid-1880s) and to the interrogation of its boundaries. Based on realist-era authors' rejection of "sentimentalism" and its reduction of emotional diversity (a tendency to stress what Karen Sanchez-Eppler has described as sentimental fiction's investment in "overcoming difference"), Melanie Dawson argues that realist-era investments in emotional detail were designed to confront differences of class, gender, race, and circumstance directly. She explores the ways in which representational practices that approximate scientific methods often led away from scientific theories and rejected rigid attempts at creating emotional taxonomies. She argues that ultimately realist-era authors demonstrated a new investment in individuated emotional histories and experiences that sought to honor all affective experiences on their own terms"-- Provided by publisher Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-296) and index Notes English Description based on print version record; resource not viewed Subject American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism Realism in literature. Emotions in literature. Individuality in literature. Difference (Psychology) in literature. LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General. American fiction. Difference (Psychology) in literature. Emotions in literature. Individuality in literature. Realism in literature. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book LC no. 2020749632 ISBN 9780472121151 0472121154

Other Titles Realist-era representations beyond sympathy

  Permalink