Writing Pain in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Writing Pain in the Nineteenth-Century United States explores how pain is represented in literary texts and genres from the nineteenth-century US, considering the aesthetic, philosophical, and ethical implications of pain across works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Alice James. It argues that pain generates language and identities, participates in theorizing the problems of mind and body, and demonstrates how literature participates in theorizing the deep chasms of selfhood, sociality, gender, and race of a formative period in American history.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 25 February 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press

Writing Pain in the Nineteenth-Century United States delves into the multifaceted representation of pain in a diverse array of literary texts and genres from the nineteenth-century United States. It explores the aesthetic, philosophical, and ethical dimensions of pain across the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Alice James, examining how the national culture of pain underwent a transformative shift in the aftermath of the invention of anesthesia. Through a comprehensive analysis of these writers' works, Constantinesco argues that pain, while undeniably destructive, also generates language and identities, and demonstrates how literature contributes to theorizing the complex problems of mind and body that underpin the profound divisions of selfhood, society, gender, and race during a pivotal period in American history.

The book begins by examining Emerson's philosophy of compensation, which posits that pain can be transformed into a source of gain. It delves into the limitations of this model, highlighting how Jacobs challenges the division of body and mind that underpins it and how Dickinson challenges its purported universality by foregrounding the unshareability of pain as a paradoxical measure of togetherness. The book then explores the concurrent economies of affects in which pain was implicated during and after the Civil War, arguing, through the example of James and Phelps, for queer sociality as a response to the heteronormative violence of sentimentalism.

The final chapter on Alice James extends the critique of sentimental sympathy while returning to the book's central premise that pain is generative and the site of thought. By linking literary formalism with individual and social formation, Writing Pain in the Nineteenth-Century United States ultimately makes the case for a close relationship between literature and the formation of identity.

This insightful book offers a valuable contribution to the study of nineteenth-century American literature and culture, shedding light on the complex interplay between pain, language, and identity in a period of profound social and cultural change.

Weight: 558g
Dimension: 240 x 164 x 22 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780192855596