Overview
- Explores the dangerous and self-destructive side of social exchange in nineteenth-century American literature
- Brings together literary studies, anthropology, and intellectual history to develop an interdisciplinary methodology
- Reconsiders the role of sentimentalism in shaping the modern discourses of the gift
Part of the book series: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century (ALTC)
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About this book
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.
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Keywords
Table of contents (10 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
Is the gift a cheery token of disinterested generosity or a Pandora’s box? Inspired by theories of giving from Emerson and Mauss to Derrida and Lacan, Alexandra Urakova offers a fresh approach to 19th-century American writers whose work thematizes giving gifts or was published in the form of the “gift book.” The hair locks and bracelets, bouquets and books that change hands in literature from Lydia Maria Child to Nathaniel Hawthorne and from Harriet Beecher Stowe to O.Henry here reveal their double-edged and deeply problematic dimensions.
-Werner Sollors, coeditor, with Greil Marcus, of A New Literary History of America
“Gifts are not always pleasant, and gift giving is not always disinterested. Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature traces ambivalence about gifts and giving through a startling range of canonical and marginal literatures. Urakova deftly explains how this ambivalence relates to the country’s belief in self-reliance and its vexed race and gender relations. By reading literature through an anthropological lens, Urakova offers fresh interpretations of sentimentality, the rise of commodity culture, and the canon.”--Stephanie Palmer, Senior Lecturer in English, Nottingham Trent University, UK
-Werner Sollors, coeditor, with Greil Marcus, of A New Literary History of America
“Gifts are not always pleasant, and gift giving is not always disinterested. Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature traces ambivalence about gifts and giving through a startling range of canonical and marginal literatures. Urakova deftly explains how this ambivalence relates to the country’s belief in self-reliance and its vexed race and gender relations. By reading literature through an anthropological lens, Urakova offers fresh interpretations of sentimentality, the rise of commodity culture, and the canon.”--Stephanie Palmer, Senior Lecturer in English, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Alexandra Urakova holds a title of docent in North American Studies at the University of Helsinki and is a Kone Foundation research fellow at the University of Tampere, Finland (2021-2024). Her research interests include nineteenth-century American literature, social and cultural history, and anthropology.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
Authors: Alexandra Urakova
Series Title: American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93270-1
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-93269-5Published: 28 April 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-93272-5Published: 29 April 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-93270-1Published: 27 April 2022
Series ISSN: 2634-579X
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5803
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 244
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations
Topics: North American Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Anthropology