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. |
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... including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or First published 2009 ...
... writing it. This study took initial form as a dissertation under the direction of Will Howarth and Arnold Rampersad, whose acumen and enthusiasm werea great boon to me insetting out. The book would notexist atall were it not for Eduardo ...
... resistanceto genteel Victorian notions ofthegrave as atopic in the workofcertain later nineteenthcentury writers, perhapsespecially Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson, whose works reveal evidence of their astringent doubts.
... writers was shaped by experiences of loss andeach attempted to dojustice tothe complexity of bereavement.Though theirevident differences emergein their different responses, they eachgained powerfortheir literary visions through their ...
... writers regarded thoseconventional approaches tothe grave as inadequate tothereal misery and mysteriousness of loss.Their works envisionnew theodicies, new forms ofsovereignty and order withwhichto illuminate the continuity behind even ...
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 |