Sentimental men : masculinity and the politics of affect in American culture

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chapman/Hendler, Author.

Contributor:

Hendler, Glenn, 1962- Contributor.

Chapman, Mary, Contributor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism--Male authors--United States.

American literature.

Men--Intellectual life--United States.

Men.

Men--Psychology.

Sentimentalism in literature.

Masculinity in literature.

Sex role in literature.

Emotions in literature.

Men in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (297 pages) : 11 black-and-white photos.

Place of Publication:

[Place of publication not identified] University of California Press 1999

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The essays in this volume analyze a wide variety of cultural forms to demonstrate the centrality of masculine sentiment in American literary and cultural history from the early republic to the progressive era. Challenging the association of sentimentality exclusively with femininity in studies of American culture, the contributors analyze sentimentalism not just as a literary genre but as a structure of feeling manifested in many areas: temperance testimonials, begging letters, historiography, philanthropic performance, photography, portraiture, and poetry. Essays from a variety of disciplines-American studies, literature, history, art, gender studies-deconstruct the alignment of reason, commerce, and the public sphere with men, and feelings, domesticity, and the private sphere with women.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I: Domestic Men

1. Fireside Chastity

2. Feeling for the Fireside

3. Then When We Clutch Hardest

Part II: Public Sentiment

4. The Black Body Erotic and the Republican Body Politic, 17901820

5. Remembering Metacom

6. Bloated Bodies and Sober Sentiments

7. Sentimental Abolition in Douglass's Decade

8. Chivalric Sentimentalism

9. The Gaze of Success

Part III: Canonical Sentiments

10. Masochism and Male Sentimentalism

11. Sentimental and Romantic Masculinities in Moby-Dick and Pierre

12. Sentimental Realism in Thomas Eakins's Late Portraits

13. Sentimental Tentacles

Notes on Contributors

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

0-520-92188-7

0-585-18434-8

OCLC:

1419788655