1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910823971103321

Autore

Balaam Peter <1963->

Titolo

Misery's mathematics : mourning, compensation, and reality in antebellum American literature / / Peter Balaam

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Routledge, 2009

ISBN

1-135-88433-1

1-281-97755-1

9786611977559

0-203-50400-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (201 p.)

Collana

Literary criticism and cultural theory

Disciplina

810.9/353

810.9003

810.9353

Soggetti

American literature - 19th century - History and criticism

Grief in literature

Bereavement in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-180) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Book Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Figures; Acknowledgments; Introduction: "Misery's Mathematics"; 1 "The Laws of Our Learning": Emerson's Grief and the Geological Principles of Loss; 2 Playing with Water: Thrill and Theodicy in The Wide, Wide World; 3 Representing Grief, Mourning Representation: Melville's Piazza Tales; Afterword: Soldering the Abyss: The Possibilities of Compensation; Notes; Works Cited; Index

Sommario/riassunto

This book reveals the strain of a moment in American cultural history that led several remarkable writers -- including Emerson, Warner, and Melville -- to render the stark rupture of loss in innovative ways. Pushing Protestant culture's sense of loss into secular terrain, these three key writers rejected Calvinist and sentimental models of bereavement, creating instead the compensations of a mature American literature whose 'originality' stemmed from its capacity to mourn the loss of a common culture and, through such mourning, to assent to new social and cultural realities. Balaam locates