Dangerous Giving in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

This book explores the dark, unruly, and self-destructive side of gift-giving as represented in nineteenth-century literary works by American authors. It asserts the centrality and relevance of gift exchange for modern American literary and intellectual history and reveals the ambiguity of the gift in various social and cultural contexts, including those of race, sex, gender, religion, consumption, and literature. Focusing on authors as diverse as Emerson, Kirkland, Child, Sedgwick, Hawthorne, Poe, Douglass, Stowe, Holmes, Henry James, Twain, Howells, Wilkins Freeman, and O. Henry as well as lesser-known, obscure, and anonymous authors, Dangerous Giving explores ambivalent relations between dangerous gifts, modern ideology of disinterested giving, and sentimental tradition.ISBN : 9783030932695 Acknowledgments Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Works Cited Chapter 2: “Hints” for a Gift Theory: The Ideology of Disinterested Giving and Its Discontents 2.1 Three Theoretical Nodes 2.2 “Thou Must Bleed for Me”: Emerson’s Revisions of the Sentimental Language of the Gift 2.3 “The Sentiment of the Thing”: Caroline Kirkland’s “Philosophy of Giving” 2.4 Twain’s “Absolutely Free Gift” and the Compromise of Patronage Works Cited Chapter 3: Sentimental Potlatch and the Making of the Nation 3.1 Potlatch and Sentimental Potlatch: Defining the Term 3.2 The Poetics of Gift Exchange in Hobomok: Typology 3.3 “I will be generous to you as I have been”: The Burden of the Gift 3.4 “Even American Ground is Occupied”: Child’s Exchange with Fenimore Cooper Works Cited Chapter 4: Un-Gendering the Gift Book 4.1 Gift-Giving in the “Era of Annuals” 4.2 “Pandora’s Box”: “Cacoethes Scribendi” and the Virus of Spinsterhood 4.3 “A Simple Black Veil”: Anti-token of Affection and the Androgynous Self 4.4 The Gift Book Turned Inside Out: “The Purloined Letter,” The Gift, and the Homosocial Works Cited Chapter 5: Racial Identity and the Perils of Giving 5.1 “The Triple Bond” of the Gift of Liberty 5.2 “Everlasting Slave”? Sentimental Rhetoric of the Gift in The Liberty Bell 5.3 “The luxury of giving”: The Ambiguities of the Black Donor Plot 5.4 “That love which circles in its chain”: Re-appropriating the Sentimental in Cassey’s Album Works Cited Chapter 6: The Poison of the Gift, the Race of the Gift 6.1 Disinterested, Interested, and Poisonous: Typology of Gifts in Uncle Tom’s Cabin 6.2 “Bound in black morocco”: Slavery and Sentimental Exchanges 6.3 The Poison of the Gift and Its Antidote Works Cited Chapter 7: Pure Tokens and Venomous Bodies 7.1 “None Are Poisonous”? A Bouquet to the Reader 7.2 “Touch It Not!” Pernicious Transactions in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” 7.3 “Subtle Poisons”: Gifts and Metaphorical Venom in Elsie Venner 7.4 Gifts, Tokens, and Sins in “Brother Dunstan and the Crabs” Works Cited Chapter 8: The Gift/s of Death 8.1 Death in Terms of Gift-Giving 8.2 A Perfect Gift from Above, or Sharing Death in The Chronicle of Young Satan 8.3 “I give and give and give”: Ethereal Giving in The Wings of the Dove Works Cited Chapter 9: “The Season of Gifts”: Christmas and Melancholia 9.1 The Melancholic Side of Christmas 9.2 “Hollowdays,” or the Christmas Dystopia of William Dean Howells 9.3 Melancholy Gifts and Givers in Mary Wilkins Freeman’s Christmas Stories 9.4 The Dangers of Perfect Giving in O. Henry Works Cited Chapter 10: Conclusion Works Cited Index Is the gift a cheery token of disinterested generosity or a Pandora's box ? Inspired by theories of giving from Emerson and Mauss to Derrida and Lacan, Alexandra Urakova offers a fresh approach to 19th-century American writers whose work thematizes giving gifts or was published in the form of the "gift book". The hair locks and bracelets, bouquets and books that change hands in literature from Lydia Maria Child to Nathaniel Hawthorne and from Harriet Beecher Stowe to O.Henry here reveal their double-edged and deeply problematic dimensions