All Categories /
Literature & Fiction /
History & Criticism

The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

(3)
The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture image
ISBN-10:

0822342022

ISBN-13:

9780822342021

Author(s): Berlant, Lauren
Edition: Illustrated
Released: Mar 17, 2008
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Format: Paperback, 368 pages
Related ISBN: 9780822341840
Find in Library

Description:

The Female Complaint is part of Lauren Berlant’s groundbreaking “national sentimentality” project charting the emergence of the U.S. political sphere as an affective space of attachment and identification. In this book, Berlant chronicles the origins and conventions of the first mass-cultural “intimate public” in the United States, a “women’s culture” distinguished by a view that women inevitably have something in common and are in need of a conversation that feels intimate and revelatory. As Berlant explains, “women’s” books, films, and television shows enact a fantasy that a woman’s life is not just her own, but an experience understood by other women, no matter how dissimilar they are. The commodified genres of intimacy, such as “chick lit,” circulate among strangers, enabling insider self-help talk to flourish in an intimate public. Sentimentality and complaint are central to this commercial convention of critique; their relation to the political realm is ambivalent, as politics seems both to threaten sentimental values and to provide certain opportunities for their extension.

Pairing literary criticism and historical analysis, Berlant explores the territory of this intimate public sphere through close readings of U.S. women’s literary works and their stage and film adaptations. Her interpretation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its literary descendants reaches from Harriet Beecher Stowe to Toni Morrison’s Beloved, touching on Shirley Temple, James Baldwin, and The Bridges of Madison County along the way. Berlant illuminates different permutations of the women’s intimate public through her readings of Edna Ferber’s Show Boat; Fannie Hurst’s Imitation of Life; Olive Higgins Prouty’s feminist melodrama Now, Voyager; Dorothy Parker’s poetry, prose, and Academy Award–winning screenplay for A Star Is Born; the Fay Weldon novel and Roseanne Barr film The Life and Loves of a She-Devil; and the queer, avant-garde film Showboat 1988–The Remake. The Female Complaint is a major contribution from a leading Americanist.

Best prices to buy, sell, or rent ISBN 9780822342021

‌
‌
‌

Frequently Asked Questions about The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture

You can buy the The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture book at one of 20+ online bookstores with BookScouter, the website that helps find the best deal across the web. Currently, the best offer comes from ‌ and is $‌ for the ‌.

The price for the book starts from $23.68 on Amazon and is available from 27 sellers at the moment.

At BookScouter, the prices for the book start at $20.88. Feel free to explore the offers for the book in used or new condition from various booksellers, aggregated on our website.

If you’re interested in selling back the The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture book, you can always look up BookScouter for the best deal. BookScouter checks 30+ buyback vendors with a single search and gives you actual information on buyback pricing instantly.

As for the The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture book, the best buyback offer comes from ‌ and is $‌ for the book in good condition.‌

‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌

The The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture book is in very low demand now as the rank for the book is 616,956 at the moment. It's a very low rank, and the book has minimal sales on Amazon.

The highest price to sell back the The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture book within the last three months was on October 28 and it was $12.75.