Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Name: Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Brand: Cambridge University Press
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

By Marianne Noble

0 - Default Title

Description

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.

Product details

Binding:: Paperback
Number of Pages:: 306
Release Date:: 2025-10-16
Publication Date:: 2025-10-16
Publisher:: Cambridge University Press
Languages:: Original: English
ISBN10:: 1108722210
ISBN13:: 9781108722216
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:: [email protected]
Weight:: 446 g
Height:: 15.2 cm
Width:: 22.9 cm
Thickness:: 1.7 cm

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