Modernizing solitude : the networked individual in nineteenth-century American literature

著者

• Furui, Yoshiaki

書誌事項

Modernizing solitude : the networked individual in nineteenth-century American literature

Yoshiaki Furui

The University of Alabama Press, c2019

注記

Includes bibliographical references and index

収録内容

• Impure Solitude: Walden, or Life in the Network
• The Solitary Woman in the Garret: Race and Gender in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
• Solitude in the Postal Age and Beyond: Melville's Dead Letters
• "Alone, I Cannot Be -": Dickinson's Invention of Modern Solitude
• The Solitude Electric: Techno-Utopianism in Telegraphic Literature

内容説明・目次

内容説明

An innovative and timely examination of the concept of solitude in nineteenth-century American literature. During the nineteenth century, the United States saw radical developments in media and communication that reshaped concepts of spatiality and temporality. As the telegraph, the postal system, and public transportation became commonplace, the country achieved a level of connectedness that was never possible before. At this level, physical isolation no longer equaled psychological separation from the exterior world, and as communication networks proliferated, being disconnected took on negative cultural connotations. Though solitude, and the lack thereof, is a pressing concern in today's culture of omnipresent digital connectivity, Yoshiaki Furui shows that solitude has been a significant preoccupation since the nineteenth-century. The obsession over solitude is evidenced by many writers of the period, with consequences for many basic notions of creativity, art, and personal and spiritual fulfillment. In Modernizing Solitude: The Networked Individual in Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Furui examines, among other works, Henry David Thoreau's Walden, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener," Emily Dickinson's poetry and letters, and telegraphic literature in the 1870s to identify the virtues and values these writers bestowed upon solitude in a time and place where it was being consistently threatened or devalued. Although each writer has a unique way of addressing the theme, they all aim to reclaim solitude as a positive, productive state of being that is essential to the writing process and personal identity. Employing a cross-disciplinary approach to understand modern solitude and the resulting literature, Furui seeks to historicize solitude by anchoring literary works in this revolutionary yet interim period of American communication history, while also applying theoretical insights into the literary analysis.

目次

List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. Impure Solitude: Walden, or Life in the Network Chapter 2. The Solitary Woman in the Garret: Race and Gender in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Chapter 3. Solitude in the Postal Age and Beyond: Melville's Dead Letters Chapter 4. "Alone, I Cannot Be -": Dickinson's Invention of Modern Solitude Chapter 5. The Solitude Electric: Techno-Utopianism in Telegraphic Literature Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index

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詳細情報

• NII書誌ID(NCID): BB27740632
• ISBN:
  • 9780817320065
• LCCN: 2018026897
• 出版国コード: us
• タイトル言語コード: eng
• 本文言語コード: eng
• 出版地: Tuscaloosa
• ページ数/冊数: x, 239 p.
• 大きさ: 24 cm
• 分類:
  • LCC : PS217.S63
  • DC23 : 810.9/35109034
• 件名:
  • LCSH : American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
  • LCSH : Solitude in literature