Misery's Mathematics: Mourning, Compensation, and Reality in Antebellum American LiteratureThis book reveals the strain of a moment in American cultural history that led several remarkable writers -- including Emerson, Warner, and Melville -- to render the stark rupture of loss in innovative ways. Pushing Protestant culture's sense of loss into secular terrain, these three key writers rejected Calvinist and sentimental models of bereavement, creating instead the compensations of a mature American literature whose 'originality' stemmed from its capacity to mourn the loss of a common culture and, through such mourning, to assent to new social and cultural realities. Balaam locates this appeal to 'reality' in the analogies antebellum writers drew between their experience of bereavement, and the experiences of uncertainty and disillusionment, that followed the revolutions in science, the winding down of creedal systems and the economic instability typifying the pre-Civil War era. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 6
... melancholia,”Freud emphasizes here thesuccessful completion of such work and the achieved overcoming of “every single one” of the investments in the lost object. Though Freud overstates this distinctionin“Mourning and Melancholia,” it ...
... melancholia are for Freud related but distinct outcomes of bereavement, Ifollow Bowlbyin assuming that they arein actuality less distinctand less end results than Freud impliesand more likelytorepresent apolarity,the opposing forces ...
... Melancholia” to be that mourning is more likelyto occur “whenan object that onehad loved for its intrinsicqualities asseparate and distinct from oneself is lost.” Inthis typeof love, affection andregard coexist withthe acceptanceof ...
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
You have reached your viewing limit for this book.
Other editions - View all
Misery's Mathematics: Mourning, Compensation, and Reality in Antebellum ... Peter Balaam Limited preview - 2009 |
Misery's Mathematics: Mourning, Compensation, and Reality in Antebellum ... Peter Balaam No preview available - 2016 |
Misery's Mathematics: Mourning, Compensation, and Reality in Antebellum ... Peter Balaam No preview available - 2009 |