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Chapter 6 - Nature

from Part I - Fractures and Continuities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2022

Justine S. Murison
Affiliation:
University of Illinois
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Summary

The antebellum era saw an epochal shift in politics: nature transformed into a key site of the political. No longer seen as a refuge from human concerns, biological existence itself became a key new resource for conceptualizing human difference and an administrative target of political power. This essay reveals sentimental literature to march in step with this shift. This mode overwhelmingly associated with the domestic realm and even the trite and saccharine nonetheless reveals an emergent biopolitics attuned to disciplining the individual’s nature and conceiving of humanity as a population whose biological quality could be optimized. An ideology that sutured literature and science together in an era in which divisions between them were just beginning to form, sentimentalism helped move politics into the flesh.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Nature
  • Edited by Justine S. Murison, University of Illinois
  • Book: American Literature in Transition, 1820–1860
  • Online publication: 09 June 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108566872.008
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  • Nature
  • Edited by Justine S. Murison, University of Illinois
  • Book: American Literature in Transition, 1820–1860
  • Online publication: 09 June 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108566872.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Nature
  • Edited by Justine S. Murison, University of Illinois
  • Book: American Literature in Transition, 1820–1860
  • Online publication: 09 June 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108566872.008
Available formats
×