Science and Technology in the Age of Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and James: Thinking and Writing Electricity (American Literature Readings in the 21st Century)

This book reveals the full extent of electricity's significance in Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century literature and culture. It provides in-depth coverage of a wide range of canonical American authors from the American Renaissance onwards. As well as many fascinating hitherto under-studied writers. This innovative book reveals the full extent of electricity's significance in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century culture. Ranging across a vast array of materials, Sam Halliday shows how electricity functioned as both a means of representing other things--from love and solidarity to embodiment and temporality--and as an object of representation in its own right. As well as Hawthorne, Melville, Twain and James, the book considers other major American writers such as Whitman, Margaret Fuller and Henry Adams; English writers such as Hardy and Kipling; and a galaxy of scientists and social commentators, including mesmerists, physicians, conspiracy theorists, psychologists and theologians Front Matter....Pages i-xii Introduction....Pages 1-15 Time and Space....Pages 17-58 Individual Difference and Self-Representation....Pages 59-93 Sympathy and Reciprocity....Pages 95-126 Connection and Division....Pages 127-161 Inclusion and Exclusion....Pages 163-195 Back Matter....Pages 197-245 Reveals the extent of electricity's significance in Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century literature and culture. This work provides coverage of a range of canonical American authors from the American Renaissance onwards, including Hawthorne, Poe, Douglass, Henry James, Twain, Norris, and others