1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910255250303321

Autore

Tuthill Maureen

Titolo

Health and Sickness in the Early American Novel [[electronic resource] ] : Social Affection and Eighteenth-Century Medicine / / by Maureen Tuthill

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London : , : Palgrave Macmillan UK : , : Imprint : Palgrave Macmillan, , 2016

ISBN

1-137-59715-1

Edizione

[1st ed. 2016.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XIV, 253 p.)

Collana

Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine, , 2634-6435

Disciplina

809.033

Soggetti

Literature, Modern—18th century

America—Literatures

Fiction

Literature—History and criticism

Eighteenth-Century Literature

North American Literature

Literary History

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. A “Very Unfeeling World”: The Failure of Social Healing in Rowson’s America -- 2. “Your Health and My Happiness”: Sickness and Health in The Coquette and Female Quixotism -- 3. “The Best Means of Retaining Health”: Self-determined Health and Social Discipline in Early America -- 4. “The Means of Subsistence”: Health, Wealth, and Social Affection in a Yellow Fever World -- 5. The “Learned Doctor”: Tyler’s Literary Endorsement of a Federalist Elite -- 6. “Some Yankee Non-sense about Humanity”: Hiding Away African Health in Early American Fiction -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.-.

Sommario/riassunto

This book is a study of depictions of health and sickness in the early American novel, 1787-1808. These texts reveal a troubling tension between the impulse toward social affection that built cohesion in the nation and the pursuit of self-interest that was considered central to



the emerging liberalism of the new Republic. Good health is depicted as an extremely positive social value, almost an a priori condition of membership in the community. Characters who have the “glow of health” tend to enjoy wealth and prestige; those who become sick are burdened by poverty and debt or have made bad decisions that have jeopardized their status. Bodies that waste away, faint, or literally disappear off of the pages of America’s first fiction are resisting the conditions that ail them; as they plead for their right to exist, they draw attention to the injustice, apathy, and greed that afflict them.