Jillmarie Murphy - Attachment, Place, and Otherness in Nineteenth-Century American Literature: New Materialist Representations

This interdisciplinary study examines the role interpersonal and place attachment bonds play in crafting a national identity in American literature. Although there have been numerous ecocritical studies of and psychoanalytic approaches to American literature, this study seeks to integrate the language of empirical science and the physical realities of place, while also investigating non-human agency and that which exists beyond the material realm. Murphy considers how writers in the early American Republic constructed modernity by restructuring representations of interpersonal and place attachments, which are subsequently reimagined, reconfigured, and sometimes even rejected by writers in the long nineteenth century. Within each narrative American perceptions of otherness are pathologized as a result of insecure human-to-human and human-to-place attachments, resulting in a restructuring of antiquated notions of difference. Throughout, Murphy argues that in order to understand fully the contextually varied framework of human bonding, it is important to emphasize Americas attachment to various constructions of otherness. Historically, people of color, women, ethnic groups, and lower-class citizens have been relegatedsocially, politically, and culturallyto a place of subordination. Refugees escaping the French and Haitian Revolutions to American cities encouraged writers to transform social, cultural, and political attachments in ways that the American Revolution did not. The United States has always been part of an extended global network that provides fertile ground from which to imagine a future American identity; this book thus gestures toward future readers, educators, and scholars who seek to explore new fields and new approaches to understand the underlying human motivations that continually inspire the American imagination.

Jillmarie Murphy is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Womens Studies Program at Union College, Schenectady, NY. She has published books, journal articles, and essays that focus on Puritan poetics, literature of the early American Republic, prominent and lesser-known antebellum literary figures, and transatlantic novelists who span the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her publications generally employ the psychosocial paradigm of attachment theory, drawing on topics considering parenting, gender, race, class, and ethnicity, as well as publications that consider the evolution of literary history and how certain authors and texts resonate long after their heyday.

Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

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81 Multilingual Currents in Literature, Translation and Culture
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82 Rewriting the American Soul
Trauma, Neuroscience and the Contemporary Literary Imagination
Anna Thiemann

83 Milton and the Early Modern Culture of Devotion
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Naya Tsentourou

84 TransGothic in Literature and Culture
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85 Latin American Gothic in Literature and Culture
Edited by Sandra Casanova-Vizcano and Ins Ordiz

86 Mediating Memory
Tracing the Limits of Memoir
Edited by Bunty Avieson, Fiona Giles, and Sue Joseph

87 From Mind to Text
Continuities and Breaks Between Cognitive, Aesthetic and Textualist Approaches to Literature
Bartosz Stopel

88 Attachment, Place, and Otherness in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
New Materialist Representations
Jillmarie Murphy

First published 2018

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ISBN: 978-1-138-67326-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-56205-6 (ebk)

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To
Tessa Bailey and Liam Edward

Many thanks go to my friends and department colleagues Patricia Wareh and Claire Bracken for their continual support and encouragement. I would also like to thank the other members of the Union College English Department, especially Jordan Smith, Kara Doyle, Judith Lewin, and Bernhard Kuhn, who consecutively and skillfully served as department chairs during the time I was working on this manuscript; Andrew Burkett, Katherine Lynes, Jennifer Mitchell, Jenelle Troxell, and Bunkong Tuon, whose place at the helm is on the horizon; Hugh Jenkins, who previously fulfilled his chairly obligations; and finally Jim McCord, Anastasia Pease and Jeannette Sargent. Thank you as always to the guy who hired me, my friend, mentor, and former department chair, Harry Marten, who read and commented on parts of this book and who chose to stick around one day, just to make sure. I would also like to thank Union College President Stephen Ainlay, Dean of Faculty Therese McCarty, and Dean of Academic Departments Wendy Sternberg for providing me with support and the space needed to complete this project. Debbie Catharine, Andrea Foroughi, Christine Henseler, Erika Nelson, and Stacie Raucci deserve thanks for their generous emotional support and stimulating conversations. Thanks to Jeffrey Corbin for passing it forward with style. Thanks as well to Avery Novitch and Erin Wade for thinking Im wonderful. The feeling is quite mutual.

Thanks are also in order for Ronald A. Bosco, whose mentoring, support, and friendship, coupled with his amazing wit and brilliant mind, have enhanced my life in more ways than he will ever know. I would also like to thank Jeffrey Walker who read far too many grant proposals than I had a right to ask him to read and who has demonstrated to me the value of a well-executed bon mot.

Heartfelt thanks are in order for the wonderfully caring professionals at RoutledgeJennifer Abbott, Veronica Haggar, and Assunta Petrone. Your kindness, humanity, and goodwill are greatly appreciated.

Thank you to Taylor, Tristin, Teagan, Tessa, and Liam for all of the joy you have brought into my life.

Finally, I would like to express sincere gratitude to my remarkable mother, Lorraine Murphy, whose courage, strength, dignity, perseverance, and bravery in the face of horrendous personal tragedies and significant attachment losses never cease to amaze me.