This dissertation explores the way a few antebellum American writers responded to the pressures and promises of liberal democracy by trying to educate their readership out of a condition of tutelage. I argue that these writers, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herman Melville, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Joseph Smith, find mainstream US sentimental education inadequate to the task it sets for itself: to produce a citizenry capable of governing itself. But where other writers interested in alternative modes of democratic indoctrination might focus on alternatives to sentimentalism, these writers investigate the possibilities of resistance to an enervating and manipulative sentimentalism from within the sentimental mode.;The point of criticism of mainstream sentimentalism common to all these texts is that they see it as grounded on a logic of escalation, which leads away from genuine engagement with political opponents toward special pleading and moral grandstanding. Of primary concern is the role of "feeling right" in the organization of political groups. How does one "feel right" without feeling "the same"? And how does a nation that praises itself for promoting the freedom of speech remain united under an ideological regime of common feeling without undercutting that principle? This dissertation traces through its four central texts predictions of a future of dysfunctional politics, and their attempts to reconfigure sentimental rhetoric such that its subjects become habituated to productive dialogue in a democratic setting.
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机译:本文探讨了一些战前美国作家通过试图在不受教养的情况下教育读者的方式来应对自由民主的压力和承诺的方式。我认为,这些作家哈里特·比彻·斯托(Harriet Beecher Stowe),赫尔曼·梅尔维尔(Herman Melville),凯瑟琳·玛丽亚·塞奇威克(Catharine Maria Sedgwick)和约瑟·史密斯(Joseph Smith)发现,主流的美国感性教育不足以完成其为自己设定的任务:培养能够自我支配的公民。但是在其他对民主灌输的替代模式感兴趣的作家可能集中于感伤主义的替代方法的情况下,这些作家从感性模式内研究了抵制激动和操纵性感伤主义的可能性。所有这些文本都对主流感性主义进行批评。他们认为这是建立在升级逻辑基础上的,这种升级逻辑从与政治对手的真正交往转向特殊的恳求和道义上的崇高地位。首先要关注的是“感觉权利”在政治团体组织中的作用。如何在没有“相同”感觉的情况下“感觉正确”?在一个有共同意识形态的意识形态体制下,一个不夸大其原则而赞扬自己促进言论自由的国家又如何团结起来呢?本论文通过四篇中央文献对政治功能失调的未来进行了预测,并试图重新构建感性的言论,以使其主体习惯于在民主环境下进行富有成效的对话。
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