American pain: The sentimental, the lyrical, the medical, the realistic
Thomas, Eric Austin
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/109568
Description
Title
American pain: The sentimental, the lyrical, the medical, the realistic
Author(s)
Thomas, Eric Austin
Issue Date
2020-10-20
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Parker, Robert D.
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Parker, Robert D.
Committee Member(s)
Newcomb, John T.
Hunt, Irvin J.
Jones, Jamie L.
Department of Study
English
Discipline
English
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
American literature
pain
sentimentalism
realism
lyric poetry
medicine
Abstract
This dissertation investigates the meanings we make out of pain—the inseparable spheres of bodily pain and psychological suffering. I ask: How has American literature represented and interpreted pain in the latter half of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century? What are the economic and moral consequences of such representations and interpretations of pain? What forms of linguistic expression disentangle bodily pain? I assert that American literature after the advent of surgical ether in 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston offers a remarkable “turn” within the inquiry into pain and its representation. The question then becomes: How did certain literary modes of representation—the sentimental, the lyrical, the medical, the realistic—construct divergent and convergent meanings of bodily pain?
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