Verlag:
The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington
American literary history of the nineteenth-century as a conflict between individualistic writers and a conformist society. In The Social Self, Joseph Alkana argues that such a dichotomy misrepresents the views of many authors.Sudden changes caused...
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American literary history of the nineteenth-century as a conflict between individualistic writers and a conformist society. In The Social Self, Joseph Alkana argues that such a dichotomy misrepresents the views of many authors.Sudden changes caused by the industrial revolution, urban development, increased immigration, and regional conflicts were threatening to fragment the community, and such writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William James, and William Dean Howells were deeply concerned about social cohesion. Alkana persuasively reintroduces Common Sense philosophy and Jamesian psychology as w
Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; 1 Translating the Self: Between Discord and Individualism in American Literary History; 2 Hawthorne's Drama of the Self: Antebellum Psychology and Sociality; 3 ""But the Past Was Not Dead"": Aesthetics, History, and Community in Grandfather's Chair and The Scarlet Letter; 4. The Altrurian Romances: Evolution and Immigration in Howells's Utopia; 5 The Ironic Construction of Selfhood: William James's Principles of Psychology; 6 Selfhood, Pragmatism, and Literary Studies: Who Do We Think We Are? And What Do We Think We're Doing?
