Bodies and books : reading and the fantasy of communion in nineteenth-century America

Resource Information

The work Bodies and books : reading and the fantasy of communion in nineteenth-century America represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of San Diego Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Bodies and books : reading and the fantasy of communion in nineteenth-century America

Title remainder

reading and the fantasy of communion in nineteenth-century America

Statement of responsibility

Gillian Silverman

Creator

• Silverman, Gillian D., 1967-

Subject

• American literature
• American literature
• American literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• Anglo-American Literature, general
• Authors and readers
• Authors and readers
• Authors and readers -- United States -- History -- 19th century
• Books and reading
• Books and reading
• Books and reading -- Psychological aspects
• Books and reading -- Psychological aspects
• Books and reading -- United States -- History -- 19th century
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Electronic book
• Electronic books
• Englische Literatur Amerikas
• History
• Interpersonal relations in literature
• Interpersonal relations in literature
• Intimacy (Psychology) in literature
• Intimacy (Psychology) in literature
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- American | General
• Literary Studies
• Literature in Diverse Languages
• United States
• 1800-1899

Genre

• Electronic book
• Electronic books
• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

"In nineteenth-century America, Gillian Silverman contends, reading - and particularly book reading - precipitated intense fantasies of communion. In handling a book, the reader imagined touching and being touched by the people affiliated with that book's narrative world - an author, a character, a fellow reader. This experience often led to a sense of consubstantiality, a fantasy that the reader, the material book, and the imagined other were momentarily merged. Such a fantasy challenges psychological conceptions of discrete subjectivity along with the very notion of corporeal integrity - the idea that we are detached, skin-bound, and autonomously functioning entities. It forces us to envision readers not as liberal subjects, pursuing reading as a means toward privacy, interiority, and individuation, but rather as communal beings inseparable from objects in our psychic and phenomenal world. While theorists have long emphasized the way reading can promote a sense of abstract belonging, Bodies and Books emphasizes the intense somatic bonds that nineteenth-century subjects experienced while reading. Silverman bridges the gap between the cognitive and material effects of reading, arguing that the two worked in tandem, enabling readers to feel deep communion with objects (both human and nonhuman) in the external world. Drawing on the letters and diaries of nineteenth-century readers along with literary works by Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Susan Warner, and others, Silverman explores the book as a technology of intimacy and ponders what nineteenth-century readers might be able to teach us two centuries later."--Project Muse

Member of

• UPCC book collections on Project MUSE

Cataloging source

E7B

Index

index present

Language note

In English

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography