The plight of feeling : sympathy and dissent in the early American novel / Julia A. Stern.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Stern, Julia A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rowson, Mrs., 1762-1824. Charlotte Temple.

Rowson.

Foster, Hannah Webster, 1759-1840. Coquette.

Foster, Hannah Webster.

Brown, Charles Brockden, 1771-1810. Ormond.

Brown, Charles Brockden.

American fiction--18th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Politics and literature--United States--History--18th century.

Politics and literature.

Psychological fiction, American--History and criticism.

Psychological fiction, American.

Dissenters in literature.

Emotions in literature.

Sympathy in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (324 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

American novels written in the wake of the Revolution overflow with self-conscious theatricality and impassioned excess. In The Plight of Feeling, Julia A. Stern shows that these sentimental, melodramatic, and gothic works can be read as an emotional history of the early republic, reflecting the hate, anger, fear, and grief that tormented the Federalist era. Stern argues that these novels gave voice to a collective mourning over the violence of the Revolution and the foreclosure of liberty for the nation's noncitizens-women, the poor, Native and African Americans. Properly placed in the context of late eighteenth-century thought, the republican novel emerges as essentially political, offering its audience gothic and feminized counternarratives to read against the dominant male-authored accounts of national legitimation. Drawing upon insights from cultural history and gender studies as well as psychoanalytic, narrative, and genre theory, Stern convincingly exposes the foundation of the republic as an unquiet crypt housing those invisible Americans who contributed to its construction.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

ONE. The Plight of Feeling

TWO. Working through the Frame: The Dream of Transparency in Charlotte Temple

THREE. Beyond "A Play about Words": Tyrannies of Voice in The Coquette

FOUR. A Lady Who Sheds No Tears: Liberty, Contagion, and the Demise of Fraternity in Ormond

Notes

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 239-291) and index.

ISBN:

9786611430672

9781281430670

1281430676

9780226773094

0226773094

OCLC:

476229660