Directed Reading, Directed Writing: Sentimental Exchanges in the Antebellum United States 公开
Brady, Jennifer Lynn (2010)
Abstract
Abstract
"Directed Reading, Directed Writing" contends that sentimental
narrative consistently
returns to the problem of its reception, to the power and danger of
the emotive reading it
seeks to produce. We see this concern both in sentimental novels
and in the world in
which they circulated: characters form deep, emotional attachments
to their beloved
books; letter-writing fans profess their devotion to an author
while scolding her for
failing to produce sequels; and anxious commentators worry about
the power that novels
exert over their audience. I attend to these moments in order to
unravel the networks that
unite author and reader through and around the sentimental text. I
argue that these
networks - dynamic, emotional relays among writers, texts, and
readers - allow authors
and audiences alike to imagine how reading sentimental narrative
affects both readers and
the world in which they live.
To pursue this claim, "Directed Reading, Directed Writing" turns to
a wide variety of
sources, including sentimental novels, nineteenth-century fan
letters, antebellum debates
about reading novels, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century
theories of affect. In the
antebellum United States, sentimental fiction operated as a crucial
site in which the
nation confronted the basic, but radical premise that reading can
entangle us - that it can
produce pleasure, passion, and change. By demonstrating how
sentimental fiction
insisted that writers and readers reconsider the very function of
reading, my project seeks
to push the critical discussion of sentimentality past its
political triumphs and
disappointments. Instead, I contend that the experience of reading
sentimental fiction
precedes and even licenses its political ramifications, and also
points to a broader
conception of the cultural work that sentimentality accomplished in
antebellum America.
Today, we continue to argue about why and how reading should
matter, and that
argument has become increasingly fraught as literary reading has
declined. "Directed
Reading, Directed Writing" suggests that we can look to the
nineteenth century for an
illustration of how the passions of literary reading might radiate
out into the public sphere
- and a way to finally name the risks and rewards of such a
thrilling pursuit.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction
Feeling and Reading Right
1
Chapter 1
Sentimental Reading in the Antebellum United States
24
Chapter 2
Directed Reading and Directed Feeling in the Sentimental
Novel:
The Case of Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World
89
Chapter 3
Readers Write Back:
Susan Warner's Readers and the Dynamics of Sentimental
Reading
142
Chapter 4
Writing Race, Reading Sentiment:
William G. Allen's The American Prejudice Against
Color
and Frank J. Webb's The Garies and Their Friends
190
Conclusion
How to Read and Why:
A Twenty-First-Century Perspective
260
Works Cited
276
About this Dissertation
School | |
---|---|
Department | |
Degree | |
Submission | |
Language |
|
Research Field | |
关键词 | |
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor | |
Committee Members |
Primary PDF
Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
---|---|---|---|
Directed Reading, Directed Writing: Sentimental Exchanges in the Antebellum United States () | 2018-08-28 13:58:24 -0400 |
|
Supplemental Files
Thumbnail | Title | Date Uploaded | Actions |
---|