Love's Whipping Boy: Violence and Sentimentality in the American Imagination

Frontmatter

LOVE’S WHIPPING BOY This page intentionally left blank Love’s Whipping Boy Violence & Sentimentality in the American Imagination ELIZABETH BARNES The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill © 2011 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed by Michelle Coppedge and set in Garamond Premier Pro by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barnes, Elizabeth, 1959– Love’s whipping boy : violence and sentimentality in the American imagination / Elizabeth Barnes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8078-3456-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. American fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Violence in literature. 3. Empathy in literature. 4. Sentimentalism in literature. 5. National characteristics, American, in literature. I. Title. PS374.V58B37 2011 813′.309353—dc22 2010034636 15 14 13 12 11 5 4 3 2 1 Parts of this book have been reprinted in revised form from “Loving with a Vengeance: Wieland, Familicide and the Crisis of Masculinity in the Early Nation,” in Boys Don’t Cry?: Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the U.S., ed. Milette Shamir and Jennifer Travis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 44–63, and “Fraternal Melancholies: Manhood and the Limits of Sympathy in Douglass and Melville,” in Frederick Douglass and Herman Melville: Essays in Relation, ed. Robert S. Levine and Samuel Otter (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 233–56. ...