Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-291) and index
American novels written in the wake of the Revolution overflow with self-conscious theatricality and impassioned excess. In The Plight of Feeling, Julia A. Stern shows that these sentimental, melodramatic, and gothic works can be read as an emotional history of the early republic, reflecting the hate, anger, fear, and grief that tormented the Federalist era. Stern argues that these novels gave voice to a collective mourning over the violence of the Revolution and the foreclosure of liberty for the nation's noncitizens, women, the poor, Native and African Americans
The plight of feeling -- Working through the frame: the dream of transparency in Charlotte Temple -- Beyond "a play about words": tyrannies of voice in the Coquette -- A lady who sheds no tears: liberty, contagion, and the demise of fraternity in Ormond