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Author:

Noble, Marianne, 1968- author.

Title:

Rethinking sympathy and human contact in nineteenth-century American literature : Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson / Marianne Noble.

Publisher:

Cambridge University Press,

Copyright Date:

2019

Description:

viii, 294 pages ; 24 cm.

Subject:

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.
Sympathy in literature.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary:

In accessible and impassioned discussions of literature and philosophy, this book reveals a surprising approach to the intractable problem of human contact. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Emily Dickinson rethought the nature of human contact, turning away from transcendentalist approaches and towards sympathetic ones. Their second and third works portray social masks as insufficient, not deceptive, and thus human contact requires not violent striking through the mask but benevolent skepticism towards persons. They imagine that people feel real in a real world with real others when they care for others for the other's sake and when they make caring relationships the cornerstone of their own being. Grounded in philosophies of sympathy - including Adam Smith and J. G. Herder - and relational psychology - Winnicott and Benjamin - Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature shows that antebellum literature rejects individualist definitions of the human and locates the antidote to human disconnection in sympathy.

Series:

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture ; 182

ISBN:

1108481337
9781108481335

OCLC:

(OCoLC)1090419897

Locations:

USUX851 -- Iowa State University - Parks Library (Ames)

LAPH975 -- Sioux City Public Library (Sioux City)