The masochistic pleasures of sentimental literature / Marianne Noble.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Noble, Marianne, 1968-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

Psychoanalysis and literature--United States--History--19th century.

Psychoanalysis and literature.

Women and literature--United States--History--19th century.

Women and literature.

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

Erotic literature, American--History and criticism.

Erotic literature, American.

Sentimentalism in literature.

Masochism in literature.

Pleasure in literature.

Sex in literature.

Warner, Susan, 1819-1885. Wide, wide world.

Warner, Susan.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. Uncle Tom's cabin.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher.

Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886--Criticism and interpretation.

Dickinson, Emily.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (267 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, c2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

For generations, critics have noticed in nineteenth-century American women's sentimentality a streak of masochism, but their discussions of it have over-simplified its complex relationship to women's power. Marianne Noble argues that tropes of eroticized domination in sentimental literature must be recognized for what they were: a double-edged sword of both oppression and empowerment. She begins by exploring the cultural forces that came together to create this ideology of desire, particularly Protestant discourses relating suffering to love and middle-class discourses of "true womanhood." She goes on to demonstrate how sentimental literature takes advantage of the expressive power in the convergence of these two discourses to imagine women's romantic desire. Therefore, in sentimental literature, images of eroticized domination are not antithetical to female pleasure but rather can be constitutive of it. The book, however, does not simply celebrate that fact. In readings of Warner's The Wide Wide World, Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Dickinson's sentimental poetry, it addresses the complex benefits and costs of nineteenth-century women's literary masochism. Ultimately it shows how these authors both exploited and were shaped by this discursive practice. The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature exemplifies new trends in "Third Wave" feminist scholarship, presenting cultural and historical research informed by clear, lucid discussions of psychoanalytic and literary theory. It demonstrates that contemporary theories of masochism--including those of Deleuze, Bataille, Kristeva, Benjamin, Bersani, Noyes, Mansfield--are more relevant and comprehensible when considered in relation to sentimental literature.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: "Weird Curves": Masochism and Feminism

One: Masochistic Discourses of Womanhood

Two: Sentimental Masochism

Three: "An Ecstasy of Apprehension": The Erotics of Domination in The Wide, Wide World

Four: The Ecstasies of Sentimental Wounding in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Five: The Revenge of Cato's Daughter: Emily Dickinson's Uses of Sentimental Masochism

Conclusion: The Possibility of Masochism

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-250) and index.

ISBN:

9786612767050

9781282767058

1282767054

9781400823659

140082365X

OCLC:

700688657