Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

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
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 04/29/2023
Pages: 244
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.27h x 5.83w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9783030932725