Gillian Silverman

Bodies and Books

Reading and the Fantasy of Communion in Nineteenth-Century America

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book argues that the practice of reading in nineteenth-century America was rooted in fantasies of communion. In handling a book, the reader imagined touching and being touched by the people affiliated with that book's narrative world. This could lead to a therapeutic sense of oneness with an author, a reader, or the material book itself.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Seitenzahl: 240
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. Mai 2012
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 499g
• ISBN-13: 9780812244151
• ISBN-10: 081224415X
• Artikelnr.: 35055206

Autorenporträt

Gillian Silverman is Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Inhaltsangabe

Preface: Reading and the Search for Oneness
Introduction: The Fantasy of Communion
Chapter 1. Railroad Reading, Wayward Reading
Chapter 2. Books and the Dead
Chapter 3. Textual Sentimentalism: Incest and the Author-Reader Bond in
Melville's Pierre
Chapter 4. Outside the Circle: Embodied Communion in Frederick Douglass's
1845 Narrative
Chapter 5. "The Polishing Attrition": Reading, Writing, and Renunciation in
the Work of Susan Warner
Epilogue: No End in Sight
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments