Maladies of the Will: The American Novel and the Modernity Problem

by Jennifer L. Fleissner

An examination of the nineteenth-century American novel that argues for a new genealogy of the concept of the will.

What if the modern person were defined not by reason or sentiment, as Enlightenment thinkers hoped, but by will? Western modernity rests on the ideal of the autonomous subject, charting a path toward self-determination. Yet novelists have portrayed the will as prone to insufficiency or excess-from indecision to obsession,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 022682201X
• ISBN13: 9780226822013
• Release Date: December 2022
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 504 Pages
• Weight: 1.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"