Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9783030932695)

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.

Author: Alexandra Urakova
ISBN-10: 3030932699
ISBN-13: 9783030932695
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Language: English
Published: 04/28/2022
Pages: 244
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.63d