Inexpressible Privacy: The Interior Life of Antebellum American Literature

Milette Shamir

Published by University of Pennsylvania Press 2006

Inexpressible Privacy

The Interior Life of Antebellum American Literature

Milette Shamir

https://doi.org/10.9783/9780812204247

Overview
Contents

About this book

Few concepts are more widely discussed or more passionately invoked in American public culture than the concept of privacy. Milette Shamir traces the peculiarly American obsession with privacy back to the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when our modern understanding of the concept took hold.

Author / Editor information

Milette Shamir is Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Tel Aviv University.

Reviews

"In what is easily one of the best works of literary and social criticism this reviewer has read in years, Shamir explores the inherent contradictions in the American 'cult of privacy,' tracing the obsession back to the decades before the Civil War. . . . Extraordinarily well written and researched, this volume confronts key gender questions. . . . Essential."—Choice

"Shamir dismantles the link that has been forged by cultural historians and literary critics between domesticity and privacy."—American Historical Review

"Shamir contributes centrally to historicist studies of feminine and masculine subjectivity and the unevenly gender-freighted practices of privacy and intimacy. The book will be noted for the large sweep of its argument about the creation of masculine privacy, as well as for the small details of its readings. Cogently argued, immediately relevant to American studies scholarship in a variety of directions, Inexpressible Privacy is extraordinarily topical and innovative."—Dana D. Nelson, Vanderbilt University

"Shamir's arguments are very persuasive, and she surveys an expansive cross-disciplinary range of writings on privacy—a great boon to those interested in the subject."—Journal of American History

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Chapter 1. Divided Plots: Gender Symmetry and the Architecture of Domestic Space Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	20
Chapter 2. Dream Houses: Divided Interiority in Three Antebellum Short Stories Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Chapter 3. The Master’s House Divided: Exposure and Concealment in Narratives of Slavery Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
Chapter 4. Hawthorne’s Romance and the Right to Privacy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Chapter 5. Thoreau in Suburbia: Walden and the Liberal Myth of Private Manhood Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Chapter 6. “The Manliest Relations to Men”: Thoreau on Privacy, Intimacy, and Writing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 296
Illustrations
- Other: 8 illus.
Keywords: Literature; Cultural Studies; American History; American Studies

eBook

Published: April 9, 2013
ISBN: 9780812204247