Perverse Feelings

Download or read book Perverse Feelings written by Suzanne Ashworth and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-09-23 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perverse Feelings: Poe and American Masculinity examines white masculinity in Poe's fiction and the culture it represents. Poe's men are tormented by chronic illness, deviant attachments, and ugly emotions. As it analyzes these afflictions, this book illuminates the pathologies of American masculinity that emerged in a terrible history of imperialism, capitalism, racism, misogyny, and homophobia. One of its central contentions is that we can better understand a past and present American masculinity through a reckoning with its "perverse feelings." More pointedly, this book asks: What does masculinity feel? What does white American masculinity feel in the first decades of nation formation? What does it feel in the crucible of its revolution, its slave system, its democracy, its nascent capitalism, and its pursuit of happiness? What feelings besiege and beleaguer Poe's men? And what can they teach us about the antagonisms of contemporary white American masculinity?