Research Catalog

Title

Apocalyptic sentimentalism : love and fear in U.S. antebellum literature / Kevin Pelletier.

Author

Pelletier, Kevin, 1975-

Publication

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2015]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 256 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• "In contrast to the prevailing scholarly con-sensus that understands sentimentality to be grounded on a logic of love and sympathy, Apocalyptic Sentimentalism demonstrates that in order for sentimentality to work as an antislavery engine, it needed to be linked to its seeming opposite--fear, especially the fear of God's wrath. Most antislavery reformers recognized that calls for love and sympathy or the representation of suffering slaves would not lead an audience to "feel right" or to actively oppose slavery. The threat of God's apocalyptic vengeance--and the terror that this threat inspired--functioned within the tradition of abolitionist sentimentality as a necessary goad for sympathy and love. Fear,then, was at the center of nineteenth-century sentimental strategies for inciting antislavery reform, bolstering love when love faltered, and operating as a powerful mechanism for establishing interracial sympathy. Depictions of God's apocalyptic vengeance constituted the most efficient strategy for antislavery writers to generate a sense of terror in their audience. Focusing on a range of important anti-slavery figures, including David Walker, Nat Turner, Maria Stewart, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Brown, Apocalyptic Sentimentalism illustrates how antislavery discourse worked to redefine violence and vengeance as the ultimate expression (rather than denial) of love and sympathy. At the sametime, these warnings of apocalyptic retribution enabled antislavery writers to express, albeit indirectly, fantasies of brutal violence against slaveholders. What began as a sentimental strategy quickly became an incendiary gesture, with antislavery reformers envisioning the complete annihilation of slaveholders and defenders of slavery"--
• "Situated at the intersection of love and fear, Apocalyptic Sentimentalism proposes a new genealogy for understanding literary sentimentalism as a complex negotiation of seemingly oppositional emotional economies. In the manuscript, Kevin Pelletier investigates the convergence of emergent sentimental practices with the fire and brimstone rhetoric of evangelical Christianity. Its aims are threefold: 1) to demonstrate that prophecies of apocalypse, and the fear they stimulate, are foundational to the U.S. sentimental tradition; 2) to analyze how abolitionist and antislavery writers adopted and revised the rhetoric of apocalyptic sentimentality in the years leading up to the Civil War; and 3) to examine how this discourse of apocalyptic sentimentalism was used to produce an innovative theory of selfhood, one that challenged the then-prevalent notion that African Americans were inherently inferior--physically, emotionally, and intellectually--than whites. The works of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, and others are discussed, as Pelletier works to uncover this ignored tradition and demonstrate how nineteenth-century apocalyptic sentimentalists produced messianic selfhood in order to subvert established racial hierarchies"--

Alternative Title

Love and fear in U.S. antebellum literature

Subjects

• Antislavery movements in literature
• Emotions in literature
• African Americans in literature
• Apocalyptic literature
• American literature > 19th century > History and criticism
• Slavery in literature
• Literature and society > United States > History > 19th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-243) and index.

Call Number

Sc E 15-654

ISBN

• 9780820339481 (hardback : acid-free paper)
• 0820339482 (hardback : acid-free paper)
• 9780820347738 (e-book) (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2014021694

OCLC

876432052

Author

Pelletier, Kevin, 1975-

Title

Apocalyptic sentimentalism : love and fear in U.S. antebellum literature / Kevin Pelletier.

Publisher

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2015]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-243) and index.

Research Call Number

Sc E 15-654