Bøker i OXFORD STUDIES IN AMERICAN LIT-serien

This 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.

Throughout history, American literature has provided an escape from the classroom; yet authors like Twain, Melville, and Ellison remain key figures in high school and college curricula. This book offers an account of this paradox, examining the contentious but ultimately generative relationship between literary and scholastic culture in the US.