Title Family, kinship, and sympathy in nineteenth-century American literature / Cindy Weinstein

Published Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2004

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Description 1 online resource (x, 243 pages) Series Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 147 Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 147. Contents In loco parentis -- "A sort of adopted daughter": family relations in The lamplighter -- Thinking through sympathy: Kemble, Hentz, and Stowe -- Behind the scenes of sentimental novels: Ida Mae and Twelve years a slave -- Love American style: The wide, wide world -- We are family, or Melville's Pierre Summary In Family, Kinship, and Sympathy in Nineteenth-Century American Literature Cindy Weinstein radically revises our understanding of nineteenth-century sentimental literature in the United States. She argues that these novels are far more complex than critics have suggested. Rather than confirming the power of the bourgeois family, Weinstein argues, sentimental fiction used the destruction of the biological family as an opportunity to reconfigure the family in terms of love rather than consanguinity. Their texts intervened in debates about slavery, domestic reform and other social issues of the time. Weinstein shows how canonical texts, such as Melville's Pierre and works by Stowe and Twain, can take on new meaning when read in the context of nineteenth-century sentimental fiction. Through intensive close readings of a wide range of novels, this groundbreaking study demonstrates the aesthetic and political complexities in this important and influential genre Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 228-236) and index Notes Print version record Subject American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism Domestic fiction, American -- History and criticism Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century Sympathy in literature. Kinship in literature. Families in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. American fiction. Domestic fiction, American. Families in literature. Kinship in literature. Literature and society. Sympathy in literature. Familierelaties. United States. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History. Form Electronic book ISBN 051126495X 9780511264955 9780511265679 0511265670 0511263384 9780511263385 9780521842532 0521842530

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