A01=Nicholas Manning
Affect theory
American Literature
Artifice
Author_Nicholas Manning
Category=DSBH
Category=DSK
Emotion
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Realism
Truth
Product details
- ISBN 9781399508001
- Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 01 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Is emotional truth a damaging literary and cultural ideal? The Artifice of Affect proposes that valuing affective authenticity risks creating a homogenized self, encouraged to comply only with accepted moral beliefs. Similarly, when emotional truth is made the primary value of literature, literary texts too often become agents of conformity. Nowhere is this risk explored more fully than in a range of American realist texts from the Cold War to the twentieth century's end. For the works of writers such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Kathleen Collins, Paula Fox, Ralph Ellison, or Richard Yates, formulate trenchant critiques of true feeling's aesthetic and social imperatives. The arguments at the heart of this book aim to re-frame emotional processes as visceral constructions, which should not be held to the standards of static ideals of accuracy, legitimacy, or veracity.
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).
