The Artifice of Affect

[headline]Offers a literary and cultural critique of the concept of true feeling, using affect theory to analyze post-war realist literatures Is emotional truth a damaging literary and cultural ideal? The Artifice of Affect proposes that valuing affective authenticity risks creating a homogenised self, encouraged to comply only with accepted moral beliefs. Similarly, when emotional truth is 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 end of the twentieth century. The works of writers such as James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Kathleen Collins, Paula Fox, Ralph Ellison and 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. [bio]Nicholas Manning is Professor of American Literature at Université Grenoble Alpes and a fellow of the Institut universitaire de France.