The Social Self
Subtitle: Hawthorne, Howells, William James, and Nineteenth-Century Psychology
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky; The University Press of Kentucky
Published: November 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 167
ISBN-13: 9780813119717
Subjects: Literary studies: 19th century; Social psychology and literature; Literary Criticism; 19th Century American Novel And Short Story; Psychology Of Literature; Literature - Classics / Criticism; English; USA; American - General; Hawthorne, Nathaniel; Howells, William Dean; Influence; James, William; Psychology; United States; 19th century; American fiction; History; History and criticism; Psychological fiction, American; Social psychology and literatu
Description: The Social Self reinterprets in an innovative way a central feature of nineteenth-century American culture: the literary representation of selfhood. Taking issue with literary histories that have routinely reduced nineteenth-century culture to simple dichotomies between dominant and oppositional discourses, Joseph Alkana argues that writers such as Hawthorne, Howells, and William James treated ideas about the self with far more complexity than such polarities imply.

By showing how these and other nineteenth-century authors handled competing commitments to sociality and the individual consciousness, The Social Self offers an original and provocative reassessment of a fundamental American literary preoccupation and radically revises traditional and recent narratives of American literary culture.