The Artifice of Affect by Nicholas Manning - 9781399507998

Name: The Artifice of Affect by Nicholas Manning - 9781399507998
Brand: Edinburgh University Press

Edinburgh University Press

The Artifice of AffectAmerican Realist Literature and Emotional Truth\nAuthor(s): Nicholas Manning\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Edinburgh University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Edinburgh University Press\nISBN-13: 9781399507998, 978-1399507998\nSynopsis\nIs 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 twentieth centurys end. For the works of writers such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Kathleen Collins, Paula Fox, Ralph Ellison, or Richard Yates, formulate trenchant critiques of true feelings aesthetic and social imperatives. The arguments at the heart of this book aim .