Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson
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Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson
About This Book
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.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half-title page
- Series page
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- CHAPTER 1 Transcendental Approaches to Human Contact
- CHAPTER 2 âSome True Relationâ: The Evolution of Hawthorneâs Understanding of Human Contact
- CHAPTER 3 âThe Sentiment of Justice Must Revolt in Every Heartâ: White Empathy with the Humanity of Black Autobiography
- CHAPTER 4 âAll the Vivacities of Life Lie in Differencesâ: Abrasive Sympathy after Uncle Tomâs Cabin
- CHAPTER 5 âSweet Skepticism of the Heartâ: Dickinsonâs Sympathetic Phenomenology
- CHAPTER 6 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Notes
- Index