Sign-In
Cart
Sentimental Collaborations: Mourning and Middle-Class Identity in Nineteenth-Century America
Paperback
Series: New Americanists
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 0822324717
ISBN13: 9780822324713
Publisher: Duke Univ Pr
Published: Jun 7 2000
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.87 Width: 6.02 Depth: 9.27
Language: English
ISBN13: 9780822324713
Publisher: Duke Univ Pr
Published: Jun 7 2000
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.13
Height: 0.87 Width: 6.02 Depth: 9.27
Language: English
During the 1992 Democratic Convention and again while delivering Harvard University's commencement address two years later, Vice President Al Gore shared with his audience a story that showed the effect of sentiment in his life. In telling how an accident involving his son had provided him with a revelation concerning the compassion of others, Gore effectively reconstructed himself as a typical, middle-class American for whom sympathy can lead to salvation. This contemporary reiteration of mid-nineteenth-century American sentimental discourse proves to be a fruitful point of departure for Mary Louise Kete's argument that sentimentality has been an important and recurring form of cultural narrative that has helped to shape middle-class American life.
Many scholars have written about the sentimental novel as a primarily female genre and have stressed its negative ideological aspects. Kete finds that in fact many men-from writers to politicians-participated in nineteenth-century sentimental culture. Importantly, she also recovers the utopian dimension of the phenomenon, arguing that literary sentimentality, specifically in the form of poetry, is the written trace of a broad cultural discourse that Kete calls sentimental collaboration-an exchange of sympathy in the form of gifts that establishes common cultural or intellectual ground. Kete reads the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Lydia Huntley Sigourney with an eye toward the deployment of sentimentality for the creation of Americanism, as well as for political and abolitionist ends. Finally, she locates the origins of sentimental collaboration in the activities of ordinary people who participated in mourning rituals-writing poetry, condolence letters, or epitaphs-to ease their personal grief.
Sentimental Collaborations significantly advances prevailing scholarship on Romanticism, antebellum culture, and the formation of the American middle class. It will be of interest to scholars of American studies, American literature, cultural studies, and women's studies.
Sentimental Collaborations significantly advances prevailing scholarship on Romanticism, antebellum culture, and the formation of the American middle class. It will be of interest to scholars of American studies, American literature, cultural studies, and women's studies.
Also in
Literary Criticism
Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times
Sachs, Aaron
Hardcover
$67.50
Queer Faith: Reading Promiscuity and Race in the Secular Love Tradition
Sanchez, Melissa E.
Paperback
$56.55
Ancient Rome at the Cinema: Story and Spectacle in Hollywood and Rome
Theodorakopoulos, Elena
Paperback
$88.49
How to Be a Cat: (Cat Books for Kids, Cat Gifts for Kids, Cat Picture Book)
Lazar, Ralph
Swerling, Lisa
Hardcover
$4.99
Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park
Cirino, Mark
Elder
Vetch, Aaron
Hardcover
$37.95
Script Analysis for Theatre: Tools for Interpretation, Collaboration and Production
Knopf, Robert
Paperback
$71.93
Mountain Farmers: Moral Economies of Land & Agricultural Development in Arusha & Meru
Spear, Thomas
Paperback
$53.58
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Alighieri, Dante
Pitavy, Francois
Paperback
$33.00
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines (Large Print Edition)
Foster, Thomas C.
Paperback
$23.74
Much ADO about Nothing: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Shakespeare, William
Sparknotes
Paperback
$7.59
Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise
Rundell, Katherine
Hardcover
$16.19
Twelfth Night: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
From $4.99
Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It
Hauser, Emily
Paperback
$19.00
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
Saunders, George
Paperback
$18.90
Romeo and Juliet: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Shakespeare, William
Sparknotes
Paperback
From $4.99
Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
Ogden, Emily
Hardcover
$27.00
Mythology (75th Anniversary Illustrated Edition): Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Hamilton, Edith
Hardcover
From $12.99
The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Paperback
$17.09
But Have You Read the Book? Romance Edition: 40 Love Stories That Inspired Our Favorite Films
Lopez, Kristen
Hardcover
$19.00
Cicero's Tongue: The Life of Rome's Greatest Orator and the End of the Republic
Edwards, Catharine
Hardcover
$29.70
Read Your Color: Discover Your Reading Type and Build a Life-Changing Love of Books
Reese, Steven J.
Paperback
$17.10
As You Like It: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
$7.59
The Art and Craft of Stephen King: The Story Behind Every Novel, Novella, and Short Story
Astic, Guy
LaFond, Frank
Hardcover
$54.00
Mandarin Chinese Characters Made Easy: An Easy Step-by-Step Approach to Learn Chinese Characters (HSK Level 1)
Lingo Mastery
Paperback
$18.63
Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
Romney, Rebecca
Paperback
$18.90
The Lightning-Bug and the Lightning: Debunking the Myths of Mark Twain, in His Own Words
Dawidziak, Mark
Hardcover
$28.50
Mean Dads for a Better America: The Generous Rewards of an Old-Fashioned Childhood
Shillue, Tom
Paperback
$15.19
Julius Caesar: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Shakespeare, William
Sparknotes
Paperback
$7.59
Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Forgotten Founding Mothers of the Fairy Tale and the Stories That They Spun
Harrington, Jane
Hardcover
$28.50
A Midsummer Night's Dream: No Fear Shakespeare Side-By-Side Plain English
Sparknotes
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
From $4.99
The Odyssey: An Illustrated Guide: A Character-By-Character Guide to the Story of Odysseus
Metzger, Doug
Hardcover
$17.10
The Jane Austen Insult Guide for Well-Bred Women: Serving Tea with a Side of Scorn
Reed, Emily
Hardcover
$14.25
Three by Annie Dillard: The Writing Life, an American Childhood, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dillard, Annie
Paperback
$20.89
The New Lifetime Reading Plan: The Classical Guide to World Literature, Revised and Expanded
Fadiman, Clifton
Major, John S.
Paperback
$18.99
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Aeschylus
Sophocles
Euripides
Paperback
$23.75