The Artifice of Affect: American Realist Literature and Emotional Truth

by Nicholas Manning

Is emotional truth a damaging literary and cultural ideal? The Artifice of Affect proposes that valuing affective authenticity risks creating a homogenized self, encouraged to comply only with accepted moral beliefs. Similarly, when emotional truth is made the primary value of literature, literary texts too often become agents of conformity. Nowhere is this risk explored more fully than in a range of American realist texts from the Cold War to the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1399507990
• ISBN13: 9781399507998
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 1.08 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"