Description
Book SynopsisThis book examines how pain is represented in a range of literary texts and genres from the nineteenth-century United States. It considers the aesthetic, philosophical, and ethical implications of pain as the national culture of pain progressively transformed in the wake of the invention of anesthesia.
Trade ReviewIn Writing Pain in the Nineteenth-Century United States, Thomas Constantinesco offers a brilliant analysis of how various 19th-century American authors have struggled with-and, to varying degrees, have succeed at-producing literary expressions of pain, expressions that are also, it is worth pointing out, part of a healing process. * Mark Niemeyer, Miranda *
Tracing the progression of the conception of pain as redemptive to one in which the amelioration of pain becomes the goal of personal and social effort, Constantinesco identifies a dichotomy that still preoccupies modern consciousness. He demonstrates how writers wrestled with complexities of interpreting pain as they relate to the formation of value and identity. Summing up: Recommended. * L. A. Brewer, CHOICE *
In his important and illuminating book, Thomas Constantinesco demonstrates that pain has a central place in aesthetic, specifically literary, practices. Meticulous in its argumentation and elegant in its prose, Writing Pain takes as its central preoccupation the many forms that pain manifests on the written page. ... Above all, Writing Pain makes a sizeable contribution to literary studies of pain, in no small part because it deftly synthesises different (though not necessarily oppositional) approaches to examining pain at the nexus of historical, representational, and phenomenological worlds. * Erica Fretwell, Textual Practice *
Constantinesco's study is remarkable for its depth and breadth, its capacity to interweave a multiplicity of critical perspectives, and take into account both the historical context and the history of ideas without ever neglecting the nuances of the texts. Its careful close readings and constant attention to detail are certainly one of its strengths. The book's arguments are articulated with force and, in most cases, clarity. Readers will also appreciate the dense bibliography and precise references to ongoing debates. * Laure de Nervaux, Revue française d'études américaines *
The research offers many spurs to further thought. As it is, it not only is a book that develops the field's knowledge and understanding of the history and meanings of pain within the context of the medical humanities, but also a piece of work that introduces and theorizes new forms of political subjecthood that the carapace of nineteenth-century liberalism might otherwise obscure. * Edward Sugden, Transatlantica *
Constantinesco invaluably contributes to historical literary scholarship by emphasizing pain's generative work as he illuminates the ways sentimentalism and anesthetizing politics unhelpfully seek to do away with pain. Writing Pain invites us to celebrate pain's 'messiness' rather than anesthetize it-a move that invites new thrilling examinations of identity and selfhood as well as the worlds and words born of pain. * Vivian Delchamps, Modern Philology *
Building on Elaine Scarry's foundational description of pain as something that both destroys and elicits language, Thomas Constantinesco's elegant and beautifully written monograph shows how pain 'fuels the work of literature' in the era of the U.S. Civil War. Across various literary forms - from Emerson's essays to Dickinson's poetry to the diary of Alice James - the writers in this study grapple with various forms of pain: physical and psychological; individual and collective. * John Levi Barnard, IdeAs *
Writing Pain invites us to celebrate pain's "messiness" rather than anesthetize it—a move that invites new thrilling examinations of identity and selfhood as well as the worlds and words born of pain. * Vivian Delchamps, Modern Philosophy *
