Ethic of Innocence

Pragmatism, Modernity, and Women's Choice Not to Know

Inbunden, Engelska, 2019

AvKristen L. Renzi,Kristen L Renzi

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Offers a feminist theory of ignorance that sheds light on the misunderstood or overlooked epistemic practices of women in literature.An Ethic of Innocence examines representations of women in American and British fin-de-siècle and modern literature who seem "not to know" things. These naïve fools, Pollyannaish dupes, obedient traditionalists, or regressive anti-feminists have been dismissed by critics as conservative, backward, and out of sync with, even threatening to, modern feminist goals. Grounded in the late nineteenth century's changing political and generic representations of women, this book provides a novel interpretative framework for reconsidering the epistemic claims of these women. Kristen L. Renzi analyzes characters from works by Henry James, Frank Norris, Ann Petry, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and others, to argue that these feminine figures who choose not to know actually represent and model crucial pragmatic strategies by which modern and contemporary subjects navigate, survive, and even oppose gender oppression.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2019-09-01
Mått152 x 229 x 23 mm
Vikt535 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieSUNY series, Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century
Antal sidor296
FörlagState University of New York Press
ISBN9781438475974

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AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Problem of Modern Female InnocencePart I. Negotiated Living 1. A Pragmatist’s Dilemma: The Collusion between Myth and Reality in the Tale of the Hull House Devil Baby2. Coming of Age via Critical Complaint: Reading Women’s Choices Not to Know in Realist Bildungsroman3. A Failure of Sympathy or of Narrative? Naturalism’s Jaded Women and the Narrative Cycle of Domestic Violence4. The Legacy of Naturalism, a Cycle of Leaving: Reading Agency in the Passive, Empty WomanPart II. Pragmatic Fantasies 5. Are Women People? Discourses of (Non)Personhood in Suffrage Poetry and Protest6. Making Women, Making Humans: Fantasies and Melancholic Mourning in Modern Sex Changes and Sex Losses7. Allowing Innocence? Belief, Knowledge, and the Modern CommunityNotesWorks CitedIndex

"An eclectic study with evidence from various genres and periods, An Ethic of Innocence is unified by its groundbreaking focus on 'epistemic innocence' … Highly recommended." — CHOICE"An Ethic of Innocence recalibrates the critical landscape, revealing blind spots in contemporary models for thinking about knowledge and agency within a feminine context. The author builds a persuasive case from powerful close readings of texts, which invite readers to question their assumptions. I cannot now imagine the field of feminist modernist studies without the interventions of this project." — Barbara Green, author of Feminist Periodicals and Daily Life: Women and Modernity in British Culture"This is a fascinating and very interesting intervention about the construction of knowledge/innocence within the field of literary studies. Anyone teaching or studying this period will find it of great use." — Stephanie A. Smith, author of Conceived by Liberty: Maternal Figures and Nineteenth-Century American Literature