Phobia and American literature, 1705-1937 : a therapeutic history / Don James McLaughlin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McLaughlin, Don James, author.

Series:

Oxford studies in American literary history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--History and criticism.

American literature.

Phobias in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : color illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, [2025]

Summary:

"Phobia and American Literature recovers a two-century history of phobia as a medical, political, and aesthetic concept from the late colonial period to the Harlem Renaissance. Scholars have presumed that phobia’s diagnosis first gathered momentum with the coinage of agoraphobia in the last third of the nineteenth century and became established with the rise of psychoanalysis and behaviorism. This narrative has eclipsed a deeper genealogy. Tracing phobia’s emergence as a variable suffix, inclined to become attached to diverse objects, situations, and ideas, the book tells a neglected story of phobia’s rise as a familiar psychological state. Focusing on conversations between writers and physicians concentrated in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, it shows how this interdisciplinary dialogue helped lay the foundation for therapeutic modes of understanding and addressing social discrimination. As medical interest in the role of textuality in mental health infused literature with awareness of its salutary capacities, American writers worked to harness the influence of the written word on readers’ psychophysiological wellbeing"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : phobia’s metaphor : the therapeutic imagination in American liberalism

The looking glass of eisoptrophobia : colonial representation and Helmontian hydrotherapy in Cotton Mather and John Adams

Hydrophobia’s doppelgänger : spurious rabies and spontaneous nosology at the dawn of phobia’s versatility

Cauterizing colorphobia : public health print culture in Mary Hayden Pike, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frederick Douglass

Before homophobia : Konträre Sexualempfindung and early conversion therapy in Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.’s A Mortal Antipathy

Monophobia’s pluralism : freedoms of expression in William, Henry, and Alice James

The dirt on mysophobia : micro-contaminations in Mark Twain’s Three Thousand Years among the Microbes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God

Epilogue : allegories of phagophobia.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource and publisher information; title from PDF title page (viewed on July 16, 2025).

Other Format:

Print version: McLaughlin, Don James. Phobia and American literature, 1705-1937.

ISBN:

9780198946014

0198946015

9780198946007

0198946007

OCLC:

1528040697

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license