States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American NovelColumbia University Press, 1997 - 152 pages States of Sympathy calls for a new approach to reading early American fiction and politics, one that recognizes sympathy as crucial to the construction of American identity: to read sympathetically becomes synonymous with reading like an American. Examining philosophical and political texts alongside literary ones, Elizabeth Barnes explores the extent to which sympathy and sentiment are increasingly employed to construct the notion of a politically affective state. Barnes demonstrates how the family comes to represent the ideal model for social and political affiliations. Familial feeling proves the foundations for sympathy and sympathy the foundation for democracy. In holding up the family as a model for sociopolitical union, however, sentimental rhetoric conflates the boundaries between familial and sociosexual ties, resulting in a confusion of familial and erotic attachment. The distinction between licit and illicit love - exemplified in numerous stories about incest and seduction - becomes a preoccupying theme in American literature. While such stories have often been read as a manifestation of anxieties about corruption in the young republic, Barnes provocatively argues that incest and seduction actually represent the logical outcome of nineteenth-century American culture's most deeply held values. |
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States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel Elizabeth Barnes Limited preview - 1997 |
States of Sympathy: Seduction and Democracy in the American Novel Elizabeth Barnes,Professor Elizabeth Barnes No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
Abigail Adams Adam Smith Adams affective American novel appear in parentheses argued attachment Baym becomes bildungsroman Billy Budd body bond Brown's Cathy Davidson century character Charlotte Temple Citations hereafter claim Coquette culture daugh daughter democratic desire domestic fiction domestic novel eighteenth-century Eliza Ellen emotional Ernest Linwood father feeling female education filial Fliegelman Francis Hutcheson Franval Gabriella Gerty Harrington Harriot heart hereafter will appear heroine human Hutcheson idea ideal ideology imagination incest individual influence Jane Lamplighter lessons letter liberal literary marriage moral mother narrative nature New-England Tale nineteenth-century novel of seduction one's parent paternalism patriarchal authority political postrevolutionary Power of Sympathy readers relations relationship represents republican Revolution rhetoric Richard Brodhead Scarlet Letter seduction fiction seduction novels sentimental fiction sentimental literature Smith social story Stowe's sympa sympathetic identification Thayer theory tion Uncle Tom's Cabin University Press Vere vicarious virtue Wieland woman women York