Emerson's contemporaries and Kerouac's crowd

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Kristin Boudreau

"In this chronicle of the role of sympathy in American literature and culture from the colonial period to the Gilded Age, Boudreau shows how the sentiment of fellow-feeling was repeatedly recruited at moments of national and personal crisis.". "Unlike many treatments of attachment and sentimentality, this book avoids positing either the radical or the conservative account of sympathy. Drawing on a range of texts from John Winthrop's 1630 "Model of Christian Charity" to William James's 1902 Varieties of Religious Experience, the work explores the entire complicated legacy of sympathy in American culture. In examining what she calls the "cultural fiction" of consanguinity, or shared blood, the author illuminates both its possibilities for soothing social and political divisions as well as its social and psychological costs. In one of the few books to trace the influence of writers of the Early Republic on antebellum sentimental works, Boudreau offers an array of examples from inside and outside the canon to illustrate that sentimental culture did not end with the Civil War."--BOOK JACKET.

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Richard F. Teichgraeber III

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau have traditionally been portrayed as alienated outsiders, isolated voices of opposition to a society that failed to heed their words. More recently, they have been seen as unwitting advocates of capitalist culture, their texts and careers driven by its hidden logic even as they indicted its excesses. In Sublime Thoughts/Penny Wisdom Richard F. Teichgraeber III rejects both of these views to offer a revisionist account of the relation of Emerson and Thoreau to the emerging market culture of antebellum America. Emerson and Thoreau, Teichgraeber argues, engaged their contemporary readers in a common conversation about the institutions, conduct, and moral fiber of a Northern society experiencing radical social changes and, in Southern slavery, encountering a dramatic challenge to its political values and economic way of life. Teichgraeber contends that Emerson and Thoreau knew their own purposes as social critics and set about achieving them in their published writings. In turn, the new mediators of antebellum culture - commercial publishers, editors, reviewers, and booksellers - successfully marketed the two Concord writers to a broad range of ordinary readers, discussed their works with surprising discernment, and constructed the images by which Emerson and Thoreau would eventually be canonized in American literature.

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Angela McAllister

Abandoned to the workhouse after the death of her guardians, Cora Parry refuses to accept her fate. Under the tuition of persuasive streetrat Fletch, Cora finds herself reluctantly drawn deep into the Victorian underworld. As she is gradually seduced into a life of crime, Cora creates a persona for herself - Carrie - allowing her to separate her uneasy conscience from her actions. But soon things are spiralling out of control. Carrie is committing acts of crime that Cora knows she can't possibly have done. Where does Carrie end and Cora begin? Who is really in control, and where will it end?

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Thomas W. Gallant

"Modern Greece provides an updated and enhanced edition of a classic survey of Greek history since the beginning of the 19th century. Giving equal weighting to social, political and diplomatic aspects, it offers detailed coverage of the formation of the Greek nation state, the global Greek diaspora, the country's relationships with Europe and the United States and a range of other topics, including women, rural areas, nationalism and the Civil War. Gallant draws on elements of anthropology, archaeology, sociology and politics to weave together a nuanced and highly readable narrative. Fresh material and new pedagogical features have been added throughout, most notably:- Two new chapters on 19th-century nationalism and 'Boom to Bust in the Age of Globalization, 1989-2013' - Greater discussion of the late Ottoman context, Greeks outside of Greece and the international background to the Greek state formation - Revisions to take account of recent scholarship, especially that published in Greece itself - Brand new timelines, maps, illustrations, charts, figures and primary source boxes - An updated further reading section and bibliography. Modern Greece is a crucial text for anyone looking to understand the complex history of this now troubled nation and its place in the Balkans, Europe and the modern globalized world"-- "An authoritative one-volume social and political history of modern Greece covering the period from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day"--