كتاب
Healing the republic: the language of health and the culture of nationalism in nineteenth-century America
| العنوان: | Healing the republic: the language of health and the culture of nationalism in nineteenth-century America |
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| المؤلفون: | Burbick, Joan. |
| بيانات النشر: | Cambridge [England] ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 1994. |
| سنة النشر: | 1994 |
| وصف مادي: | x, 355 p. ; 24 cm. |
| سلاسل: | Cambridge studies in American literature and culture Cambridge studies in American literature and culture |
| مصطلحات موضوعية: | Human Body., Attitude to Health., Medicine in Literature., History, 19th Century., Human body in literature., American prose literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism., Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 19th century., Health attitudes -- United States -- History -- 19th century., American fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism., National characteristics, American, in literature., Nationalism -- United States -- History -- 19th century., Medical literature -- History and criticism., Medicine in literature., Health in literature., Criticism, interpretation, etc., History. |
| جغرافية الموضوع: | United States. |
| الوصف: | In this study Joan Burbick interprets nineteenth-century narratives of health written by physicians, social reformers, lay healers, and literary artists in order to expose the conflicts underlying the creation of a national culture in America. These "fictions" of health include annual reports of mental asylums, home physician manuals, social reform books, and novels consumed by the middle class that functioned as cautionary tales of well-being. Read together these writings engage in a counterpoint of voices at once constructing and debating the hegemonic values of the emerging American nation. That political values flow from the daily exigencies of survival and enjoyment is one of the claims advanced by theorists of cultural hegemony. Broadening this assumption, the narratives of health presented here address the demands and desires of everyday life and construct a national discourse with directives on control, authority, and subordination. They articulate the wish for a healthy citizenry, freed of pain and saturated with well-being, and they insist upon specific ideologies and knowledges of the body in order to achieve this radiance of health. Divided into two parts, the work first examines the structures of authority found in health narratives and then studies the topology of the body found in a cross section of writings. The first part examines how the authority of "common sense" is pitted against that of physiological law and its transcendent "constitution" for the body. The second analyzes how specific knowledges about the brain, heart, nerves, and eye provide individual "keys" to health, indices that reveal the conflicts inherent in American nationalism. In studying these narratives of health, Healing the Republic confronts what Burbick sees as a certain fundamental uneasiness about democracy in America. Fearing the political freedom they hoped to embrace. Americans designed ways to control the body in the effort to create, impose, or encompass social order in a corporeal politics whose influences are felt to this day. |
| ملاحظة حول المحتويات: | pt. 1. The Common Senses of America. 1. Healing the "People" 2. Doubting the Senses. 3. The Body Politics of Walden -- pt. 2. Writing the Constitution of the Body. 4. Counterfeit Sensations. 5. Enforcing the Laws of Physiology. 6. Biodemocracy in Leaves of Grass -- pt. 1. Riddles of the Brain. 7. Managing Mental Labor. 8. The National Narrative of Monomania -- pt. 2. The Tell-Tale Heart. 9. The Counter-Narrative of Domestic Sorrow. 10. Complaints of the Heart -- pt. 3. Nervous Reports. 11. Revenge of the Nerves. 12. Allegories of Nervous Fever -- pt. 4. The Recording Eye. 13. Sighting the Divine. 14. Technologies of the Eye -- Conclusion: Somatic Politics. |
| Original Identifier: | ocm28890893 |
| نوع الوثيقة: | Book |
| اللغة: | English |
| ردمك: | 978-0-521-45434-6 0-521-45434-4 |
| حقوق: | This record is part of the Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset, which is provided by the Harvard Library under its Bibliographic Dataset Use Terms and includes data made available by, among others, OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. and the Library of Congress. |
| ملاحظات: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 307-350) and index. |
| رقم الأكسشن: | edshlc.004998691.0 |
| قاعدة البيانات: | Harvard Library Bibliographic Dataset |
| ردمك: | 9780521454346 0521454344 |
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