Description
Book SynopsisAn innovative and timely examination of the concept of solitude in nineteenth-century American literature. Though solitude, and the lack thereof, is a pressing concern in today's culture of omnipresent digital connectivity, Yoshiaki Furui shows that solitude has been a significant preoccupation since the nineteenth-century.
Trade ReviewAn engaging discussion of how the developments of the nineteenth-century communications revolution changed the ways in which writers in the United States came to understand the categories of solitude and loneliness in the middle decades of the century."" - Les Harrison, author of
The Temple and the Forum: The American Museum and Cultural Authority in Hawthorne, Melville, Stowe, and Whitman""In its reclamation of solitude as a productive state of being,
Modernizing Solitude joins recent writing that argues for a degree of off-the-grid, more meditative existence to curb social media addiction. As such, it would appeal to those who seek models of moderation, or who are at least curious about the ways in which historical figures negotiated their media consumption in order to remain productive individuals."" - John M. Picker, author of
Victorian SoundscapesTable of Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Impure Solitude: Walden, or Life in the Network
- Chapter 2. The Solitary Woman in the Garret: Race and Gender in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
- Chapter 3. Solitude in the Postal Age and Beyond: Melville’s Dead Letters
- Chapter 4. “Alone, I Cannot Be –”: Dickinson’s Invention of Modern Solitude
- Chapter 5. The Solitude Electric: Techno-Utopianism in Telegraphic Literature
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
