1st Edition
Misery's Mathematics Mourning, Compensation, and Reality in Antebellum American Literature
By Peter Balaam
Copyright 2009
200 Pages
by
Routledge
200 Pages
by
Routledge
200 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
This book reveals the strain of a moment in American cultural history that led several remarkable writers -- including Emerson, Warner, and Melville -- to render the stark rupture of loss in innovative ways. Pushing Protestant culture's sense of loss into secular terrain, these three key writers rejected Calvinist and sentimental models of bereavement, creating instead the compensations of a... Read more
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: "Misery’s Mathematics"
Chapter One: "The Laws of our Learning": Emerson’s Grief and the Geological
Principles of Loss
Chapter Two: Playing with Water: Thrill and Theodicy in The Wide, Wide World
Chapter Three: Representing Grief, Mourning Representation: Melville’s Piazza Tales
Afterword: Soldering the Abyss: The Possibilities of Compensation
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Biography
Peter Balaam teaches English and American Studies at Carleton College.
