Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature E-Book

Alexandra Urakova

• Herausgeber: Springer International Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

This book explores the dark, unruly, and self-destructive side of gift-giving as represented in nineteenth-century literary works by American authors. It asserts the centrality and relevance of gift exchange for modern American literary and intellectual history and reveals the ambiguity of the gift in various social and cultural contexts, including those of race, sex, gender, religion, consumption, and literature. Focusing on authors as diverse as Emerson, Kirkland, Child, Sedgwick, Hawthorne, Poe, Douglass, Stowe, Holmes, Henry James, Twain, Howells, Wilkins Freeman, and O. Henry as well as lesser-known, obscure, and anonymous authors, Dangerous Giving explores ambivalent relations between dangerous gifts, modern ideology of disinterested giving, and sentimental tradition.