American Literature and Therapeutic Cultures
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American literature
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modernism
performance
poetry
post-war fiction
psychology
therapeutic culture
therapy
twentieth-century literature
twenty-first century literature
Product details
- ISBN 9781399551328
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Jan 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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This volume explores the myriad interactions between American literature and psychological discourses in the United States, from self-help to alternative health practices to psychotherapeutic approaches. Spanning the 1940s to the 2020s, it sheds light on the development and conceptualization of therapeutic culture during a century in which it has oscillated between clinical and cultural domains. Bringing together an intergenerational group of scholars from France, the UK and the US, the collection examines authors as varied as William Carlos Williams, Lionel Trilling, Sylvia Plath, Philip Roth, Colson Whitehead, Daniel Suarez and Ottessa Moshfegh. Moving beyond the conventional focus on psychoanalysis, the eleven contributors foreground how American literature is animated by broader therapeutic modes and trajectories. At stake are not only literature's historical links to psychological theories and institutions, but the neoliberal framing of literary texts as tools for personal restoration.
Nicholas Manning is Professor of American Literature at Université Grenoble Alpes and a fellow of the Institut universitaire de France. His most recent monograph is The Artifice of Affect: American Realist Literature and Emotional Truth (2023). Martin Halliwell is Professor of American Thought and Culture at the University of Leicester. His recent books include The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health (2022) and Transformed States: Medicine, Biotechnology, and American Culture, 1990–2020 (2025).
