Melanie V. Dawson's Books

Emotional Reinventions

Realist-Era Representations Beyond Sympathy

By: Melanie V. Dawson

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Emotional Reinventions

Realist-Era Representations Beyond Sympathy

By: Melanie V. Dawson

Focusing on representational approaches to emotion during the years of American literary realism’s dominance and in the works of such authors as Edith Wharton, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, W. D. Howells, Charles Chesnutt, and others, Emotional Reinventions: Realist-Era Representations Beyond Sympathy contends that emotional representations were central to the self-conscious construction of high realism (in the mid-1880s) and to the interrogation of its boundaries. Based on realist-era authors’ rejection of “sentimentalism” and its reduction of emotional diversity (a tendency to stress what Karen Sanchez-Eppler has described as sentimental fiction’s investment in “overcoming difference”), Melanie Dawson argues that realist-era investments in emotional detail were designed to confront differences of class, gender, race, and circumstance directly. She explores the ways in which representational practices that approximate scientific methods often led away from scientific theories and rejected rigid attempts at creating emotional taxonomies. She argues that ultimately realist-era authors demonstrated a new investment in individuated emotional histories and experiences that sought to honor all affective experiences on their own terms.

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Age

Page Count

319

Publisher

University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0472121154

ISBN 13

9780472121151

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

By: Melanie V. Dawson

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Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

By: Melanie V. Dawson

Providing a counterpoint to readings of modern American culture that focus on the cult of youth, Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age interrogates early twentieth-century literature’s obsessions with aging past early youth. Exploring the ways in which the aging process was understood as generating unequal privileges and as inciting intergenerational contests, this study situates constructions of age at the center of modern narrative conflicts. Dawson examines how representations of aging connect the work of Edith Wharton to writings by a number of modern authors, including Willa Cather, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Zora Neale Hurston, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Floyd Dell, Eugene O’Neill, and Gertrude Atherton. For these writers, age-based ideologies filter through narratives of mourning for youth lost in the Great War, the trauma connected to personal change, the contested self-determination of the aged, the perceived problem of middle-aged sexuality, fantasies of rejuvenation, and persistent patterns of patriarchal authority. The work of these writers shows that as the generational ascendancy of some groups was imagined to operate in tandem with disempowerment of others, the charged dynamics of age gave rise to contests about property and authority. Constructions of age-based values also reinforced gender norms, producing questions about personal value that were directed toward women of all ages. By interpreting Edith Wharton’s and her contemporaries’ works in relation to age-based anxieties, Dawson sets Wharton’s work at the center of a vital debate about the contested privileges associated with age in contemporary culture.

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Age

Page Count

379

Publisher

University Press of Florida

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813057418

ISBN 13

9780813057415

Emotional Reinventions

Realist-Era Representations Beyond Sympathy

By: Melanie V. Dawson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Emotional Reinventions

Realist-Era Representations Beyond Sympathy

By: Melanie V. Dawson

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

319

Publisher

University of Michigan Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0472121154

ISBN 13

9780472121151

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

By: Melanie V. Dawson

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

By: Melanie V. Dawson

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

379

Publisher

University Press of Florida

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813057418

ISBN 13

9780813057415

Book's by Melanie V. Dawson

Emotional Reinventions

Emotional Reinventions

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

Emotional Reinventions

Emotional Reinventions

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

Edith Wharton and the Modern Privileges of Age

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