Description: This is a very rare book on Early American Studies. Book is a First Edition, but publishing date is 2011, not 2010 as in eBay's publisher details. It is an in depth study of the historical understanding and application of a person's physical appearance and its influence on society, class, literature, the performing arts and life in general. This unique work examines Early American Studies in a manner most likely never studied previously. NO INTERNATIONAL SALES. U.S. Shipping is $9.99 for USPS Media Mail. ABOUT THE BOOK: In this path-breaking study of the intersections between visual and literary culture, Christopher J. Lukasik explores how early Americans grappled with the relationship between appearance and social distinction in the decades between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Through a wide range of evidence, including canonical and obscure novels, newspapers, periodicals, scientific and medical treatises, and plays as well as conduct manuals, portraits, silhouettes, and engravings, Discerning Characters charts the transition from the eighteenth century's emphasis on performance and manners to the search for a more reliable form of corporeal legibility in the wake of the Revolution. The emergence of physiognomy, which sought to understand a person's character based on apparently unchanging facial features, facilitated a larger shift in perception about the meanings of physical appearance and its relationship to social distinction. The ensuing struggle between the face as a pliable medium of cultural performance and as rigid evidence of social standing, Lukasik argues, was at the center of the post-Revolutionary novel, which imagined physiognomic distinction as providing stability during a time of cultural division and political turmoil. As Lukasik shows, this tension between a model of character grounded in the fluid performances of the self and one grounded in the permanent features of the face would continue to shape not only the representation of social distinction within the novel but, more broadly, the practices of literary production and reception in nineteenth-century America across a wide range of media. The result is a new interdisciplinary interpretation of the rise of the novel in America that reconsiders the political and social aims of the genre during the fifty years following the Revolution. In so doing, Discerning Characters powerfully rethinks how we have readand continue to readboth novels and each other.
Price: 199.99 USD
Location: La Porte, Indiana
End Time: 2024-02-18T07:32:28.000Z
Shipping Cost: 9.99 USD
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Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Publication Name: Discerning Characters
Item Length: 9in.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Subject: American Studies, Behavioral Sciences, Cultural Studies, Government, History, Philosophy, Politics, Social Sciences, Theater, Theatre Studies
Publication Year: 2010
Series: Early American Studies
Type: Textbook
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Author: Christopher J. Lukasik
Educational Level: Adult & Further Education
Personalized: No
Features: 1st Edition, Dust Jacket
Country/Region of Manufacture: America
Item Width: 6in.
Number of Pages: 328 Pages
