UID:
almafu_9959615302002883
Format:
1 online resource (192 p.)
ISBN:
9780823245550
Content:
Between 1850 and 1940, with the rise of managerial capitalism in the United States, the most powerful businesses ceased to be family owned, instead becoming sprawling organizations controlled by complex bureaucracies. Sentimental literature—work written specifically to convey and inspire deep feeling—does not seem to fit with a swiftly bureaucratizing society. Surprisingly, though, sentimental language persisted in American literature, even as a culture of managed systems threatened to obscure the power of individual affect.The Sentimental Touch explores the strange, enduring power of sentimental language in the face of a rapidly changing culture. Analyzing novels by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Sherwood Anderson, and Nathanael West, the book demonstrates that sentimental language changes but remains powerful, even in works by authors who self-consciously write against the sentimental tradition. Sentimental language has an afterlife, enduring in American literature long after authors and critics declared it dead, insisting that human feeling can resist a mechanizing culture and embodying, paradoxically, the way that literary conventions themselves become mechanical and systematic.
Note:
Frontmatter --
,
Contents --
,
Acknowledgments --
,
Introduction --
,
1. Touching the Body, Training the Reader --
,
2. Managing Sentimentalism in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn --
,
3. Holding On to the Sentimental in Winesburg, Ohio --
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4. A Touch of Miss Lonelyhearts --
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Epilogue --
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Notes --
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Bibliography --
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Index
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In English.
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1515/9780823245550
URL:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823245550
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780823245550
URL:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823245550
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9780823245550
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