1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786896403321

Autore

Luck Chad

Titolo

The body of property : antebellum American fiction and the phenomenology of possession / / Chad Luck

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Fordham University Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-8232-6746-6

0-8232-6634-6

0-8232-6302-9

0-8232-6303-7

Edizione

[First edition.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (308 p.)

Collana

American Literatures Initiative

Classificazione

LIT004020LAW060000PHI018000

Disciplina

813/.3093553

Soggetti

American fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Material culture in literature

American fiction - 18th century - History and criticism

Property in literature

Personal belongings in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Pierson v. Post and the Literary Origins of American Property -- 1. Walking the Property: Ownership, Space, and the Body in Motion in Edgar Huntly -- 2. Eating Dwelling Gagging: Hawthorne, Stoddard, and the Phenomenology of Possession -- 3. Anxieties of Ownership: Debt, Entitlement, and the Plantation Romance -- 14. Feeling at a Loss: Theft and Affect in George Lippard -- Epilogue. Wisconsin, 2004: Racial Violence and the Bodies of Property -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

What does it mean to own something? How does a thing become mine? Liberal philosophy since John Locke has championed the salutary effects of private property but has avoided the more difficult questions of property’s ontology. Chad Luck argues that antebellum American literature is obsessed with precisely these questions. Reading slave narratives, gothic romances, city-mystery novels, and a range of other



property narratives, Luck unearths a wide-ranging literary effort to understand the nature of ownership, the phenomenology of possession. In these antebellum texts, ownership is not an abstract legal form but a lived relation, a dynamic of embodiment emerging within specific cultural spaces—a disputed frontier, a city agitated by class conflict. Luck challenges accounts that map property practice along a trajectory of abstraction and “virtualization.” The book also reorients recent Americanist work in emotion and affect by detailing a broader phenomenology of ownership, one extending beyond emotion to such sensory experiences as touch, taste, and vision. This productive blend of phenomenology and history uncovers deep-seated anxieties—and enthusiasms—about property across antebellum culture.

2.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910164955203321

Autore

Halpern Richard

Titolo

Eclipse of Action : Tragedy and Political Economy / / Richard Halpern

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , [2017]

©2017

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (322 pages)

Disciplina

809.2/512

Soggetti

Tragedy - History and criticism

Tragedy - Themes, motives

Economics in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter one. "Thy Bloody and Invisible Hand" -- Chapter two. Greek Tragedy and the Raptor Economy -- Chapter three. Marlowe's Theater of Night -- Chapter four. Hamlet and the Work of Death -- Chapter five. The Same Old Grind -- Chapter six. Hegel, Marx, and the Novelization of Tragedy -- Chapter seven. Beckett's Tragic Pantry -- Postscript. After Beckett -- Notes -- Index



Sommario/riassunto

According to traditional accounts, the history of tragedy is itself tragic: following a miraculous birth in fifth-century Athens and a brilliant resurgence in the early modern period, tragic drama then falls into a marked decline. While disputing the notion that tragedy has died, this wide-ranging study argues that it faces an unprecedented challenge in modern times from an unexpected quarter: political economy. Since Aristotle, tragedy has been seen as uniquely exhibiting the importance of action for human happiness. Beginning with Adam Smith, however, political economy has claimed that the source of happiness is primarily production. Eclipse of Action examines the tense relations between action and production, doing and making, in playwrights from Aeschylus, Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton to Beckett, Arthur Miller, and Sarah Kane. Richard Halpern places these figures in conversation with works by Aristotle, Smith, Hegel, Marx, Hannah Arendt, Georges Bataille, and others in order to trace the long history of the ways in which economic thought and tragic drama interact.