Malicious objects, anger management, and the question of modern literature / Jorg Kreienbrock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kreienbrock, Jörg, 1969-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anger.

Emotions.

Anger in literature.

Emotions in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (323 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : Fordham University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Why do humans get angry with objects? Why is it that a malfunctioning computer, a broken tool, or a fallen glass causes an outbreak of fury? How is it possible to speak of an inanimate object’s recalcitrance, obstinacy, or even malice? When things assume a will of their own and seem to act out against human desires and wishes rather than disappear into automatic, unconscious functionality, the breakdown is experienced not as something neutral but affectively—as rage or as outbursts of laughter. Such emotions are always psychosocial: public, rhetorically performed, and therefore irreducible to a “private” feeling.By investigating the minutest details of life among dysfunctional household items through the discourses of philosophy and science, as well as in literary works by Laurence Sterne, Jean Paul, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, and Heimito von Doderer, Kreienbrock reconsiders the modern bourgeois poetics that render things the way we know and suffer them.

Contents:

Introduction: how (not) to do things with doors

"When things move upon bad hinges": Sterne and stoicism

Annoying bagatelles: Jean Paul and the comedy of the quotidian

Malicious objects: Friedrich Theodor Vischer and the (non)functionality of things

Igniting anger: Heimito von Doderer and the psychopathology of everyday rage.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-303) and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-8232-4531-4

0-8232-5072-5

0-8232-5051-2

OCLC:

820632040