Rethinking sympathy and human contact in nineteenth-century American literature : Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson

Resource Information

The work Rethinking sympathy and human contact in nineteenth-century American literature : Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Rethinking sympathy and human contact in nineteenth-century American literature : Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson

Title remainder

Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson

Statement of responsibility

Marianne Noble

Creator

• Noble, Marianne, 1968-

Author

• Noble, Marianne, 1968-

Subject

• American literature
• American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Sympathy in literature
• Sympathy in literature
• Sympathy in literature
• 1800-1899
• American literature

Genre

• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

In accessible and impassioned discussions of literature and philosophy, this book reveals a surprising approach to the intractable problem of human contact. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Emily Dickinson rethought the nature of human contact, turning away from transcendentalist approaches and towards sympathetic ones. Their second and third works portray social masks as insufficient, not deceptive, and thus human contact requires not violent striking through the mask but benevolent skepticism towards persons. They imagine that people feel real in a real world with real others when they care for others for the other's sake and when they make caring relationships the cornerstone of their own being. Grounded in philosophies of sympathy - including Adam Smith and J. G. Herder - and relational psychology - Winnicott and Benjamin - Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature shows that antebellum literature rejects individualist definitions of the human and locates the antidote to human disconnection in sympathy

Member of

• Cambridge studies in American literature and culture, 182

Cataloging source

UKMGB

Dewey number

813.3093552

Index

index present

LC call number

PS217.S96

LC item number

N63 2019

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Cambridge studies in American literature and culture

Series volume

182