Sentimental Materialism

Examines the constructions of feminine consumption in the nineteenth century in relation to capitalism and domesticity.

Aesthetic Materialism: Electricity and American Romanticism focuses on American romantic writers' attempts to theorize aesthetic experience through the language of electricity. In response to scientific and technological developments, most notably the telegraph, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century electrical imagery reflected the mysterious workings of the physical mind as well as the uncertain, sometimes shocking connections between individuals. Writers such as Whitman, Melville, and Douglass drew on images of electricity and telegraphy to describe literature both as the product of specific economic and social conditions and as a means of transcending the individual determined by such conditions. Aesthetic Materialism moves between historical and cultural analysis and close textual reading, challenging readers to see American literature as at once formal and historical and as a product of both aesthetic and material experience.

The nineteenth-century French novel has long been seen as the heroic production of great men, who confronted in their works the social consequences of the French Revolution. And it is true that French realism, especially as developed by Balzac and Stendhal, was one of the most influential novelistic forms ever invented. Margaret Cohen, however, challenges the traditional account of the genesis of realism by returning Balzac and Stendhal to the forgotten novelistic contexts of their time. Reconstructing a key formative period for the novel, she shows how realist codes emerged in a "hostile take-over" of a prestigious contemporary sentimental practice of the novel, which was almost completely dominated by women writers. Cohen draws on impressive archival research, resurrecting scores of forgotten nineteenth-century novels, to demonstrate that the codes most closely identified with realism were actually the invention of sentimentality, a powerful aesthetic of emerging liberal-democratic society, although Balzac and Stendhal trivialized sentimental works by associating them with "frivolous" women writers and readers. Attention to these gendered struggles over genre explains why women were not pioneers of realism in France during the nineteenth century, a situation that contrasts with England, where women writers played a formative role in inventing the modern realist novel. Cohen argues that to understand how literary codes respond to material factors, it is imperative to see how such factors take shape within the literary field as well as within society as a whole. The book also proposes that attention to literature as a social institution will help critics resolve the current, vital question of how to practice literary history in the wake of poststructuralism.

This collection of new essay examines how authors of the 20th and 21st centuries continue the use of sentimental forms and tropes of 19th century literature. Current literary and cultural critical consensus seems to maintain that Americans engaged in a turn-of-the-century refutation of the sentimental mode; an analysis of 20th and 21st century narratives, however, reveals an ongoing use of sentimental expression that draws upon its ability to instruct and influence readers through their emotions. While these later narratives employ aspects of the sentimental mode, many of them also engage in a critique of the failures of the sentimental, deconstructing 19th century perspectives on race, class and gender and the ways they are promoted by sentimental ideals.

Always study with the most up-to-date prep! Look for LSAT Prep Plus 2020-2021, ISBN 978-1-5062-3916-3, on sale December 24, 2019. Publisher's Note: Products purchased from third-party sellers are not guaranteed by the publisher for quality, authenticity, or access to any online entitles included with the product.

Kaplan's LSAT Prep Plus 2020–2021 is updated for the Digital LSAT and features official LSAT practice questions, an official practice exam, and in-depth strategies to help you score higher. You'll learn how to apply your skills and strategies with instructor-led online workshops and expert videos so you can face the new LSAT format with confidence. We are so certain that LSAT Prep Plus 2020–2021 offers all the knowledge you need to excel on the LSAT that we guarantee it: after studying with the online resources and book, you'll score higher on the LSAT—or you'll get your money back. The Best Review Our LSAT experts have explored the new software extensively and share practical tips for using the digital interface. Study plans will help you make the most of your practice time, regardless of how much time that is. Our exclusive data-driven learning strategies help you focus on what you need to study. In the online resources, an official full-length exam from LSAC, the LSAT testmaker, will help you feel comfortable with the exam format and avoid surprises on Test Day. Hundreds of real LSAT questions with detailed explanations Interactive online instructor-led workshops for expert review Online test analytics that analyze your performance by section and question type Expert Guidance LSAT Prep Plus comes with access to an episode from Kaplan's award-winning LSAT Channel, featuring one of Kaplan's top LSAT teachers. We know the test: Kaplan's expert LSAT faculty teach the world's most popular LSAT course, and more people get into law school with a Kaplan LSAT course than all other major test prep companies combined. Kaplan's experts ensure our practice questions and study materials are true to the test. We invented test prep—Kaplan (www.kaptest.com) has been helping students for 80 years. Our proven strategies have helped legions of students achieve their dreams. The previous edition of this book was titled The LSAT Unlocked 2018–2019.

Modern Sentimentalism examines how American female novelists reinvented sentimentalism in the modernist period. Just as the birth of the modern woman has long been imagined as the death of sentimental feeling, modernist literary innovation has been understood to reject sentimental aesthetics. Modern Sentimentalism reframes these perceptions of cultural evolution. Taking up icons such as the New Woman, the flapper, the free lover, the New Negro woman, and the divorcee, this book argues that these figures embody aspects of a traditional sentimentality while also recognizing sentiment as incompatible with ideals of modern selfhood. These double binds equally beleaguer the protagonists and shape the styles of writers like Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Anita Loos, and Jessie Fauset. 'Modern sentimentalism' thus translates nineteenth-century conventions of sincerity and emotional fulfillment into the skeptical, self-conscious modes of interwar cultural production. Reading canonical and under-examined novels in concert with legal briefs, scientific treatises, and other transatlantic period discourse, and combining traditional and quantitative methods of archival research, Modern Sentimentalism demonstrates that feminine feeling, far from being peripheral to twentieth-century modernism, animates its central principles and preoccupations.