Inexpressible Privacy

The Interior Life of Antebellum American Literature

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, American, Nonfiction, Reference & Language, Reference, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science
Cover of the book Inexpressible Privacy by Milette Shamir, University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Milette Shamir ISBN: 9780812204247
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. Publication: April 9, 2013
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press Language: English
Author: Milette Shamir
ISBN: 9780812204247
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication: April 9, 2013
Imprint: University of Pennsylvania Press
Language: English

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

Few concepts are more widely discussed or more passionately invoked in American public culture than that of privacy. What these discussions have lacked, however, is a historically informed sense of privacy's genealogy in U.S. culture. Now, Milette Shamir traces this peculiarly American obsession back to the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when our modern understanding of privacy took hold.

Shamir explores how various discourses, as well as changes in the built environment, worked in tandem to seal, regulate, and sanctify private spaces, both domestic and subjective. She offers revelatory readings of texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and other, less familiar antebellum writers and looks to a wide array of sources, including architectural blueprints for private homes, legal cases in which a "right to privacy" supplements and exceeds property rights, examples of political rhetoric vaunting the sacred inviolability of personal privacy, and conduct manuals prescribing new codes of behavior to protect against intrusion.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

Few concepts are more widely discussed or more passionately invoked in American public culture than that of privacy. What these discussions have lacked, however, is a historically informed sense of privacy's genealogy in U.S. culture. Now, Milette Shamir traces this peculiarly American obsession back to the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when our modern understanding of privacy took hold.

Shamir explores how various discourses, as well as changes in the built environment, worked in tandem to seal, regulate, and sanctify private spaces, both domestic and subjective. She offers revelatory readings of texts by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, and other, less familiar antebellum writers and looks to a wide array of sources, including architectural blueprints for private homes, legal cases in which a "right to privacy" supplements and exceeds property rights, examples of political rhetoric vaunting the sacred inviolability of personal privacy, and conduct manuals prescribing new codes of behavior to protect against intrusion.

More books from University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.

Cover of the book Looting and Rape in Wartime by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Human Rights in American Foreign Policy by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Slavery in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book The Al Qaeda Factor by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Radical Pacifism in Modern America by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Strangers Nowhere in the World by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Daughters of the Trade by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book The Head in Edward Nugent's Hand by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Jennie Gerhardt by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book American Justice 2016 by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Radclyffe Hall by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Subjects unto the Same King by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Nothing Natural Is Shameful by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book The Fabrication of American Literature by Milette Shamir
Cover of the book Sanctifying the Name of God by Milette Shamir
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy