Idle Threats
Men and the Limits of Productivity in Nineteenth Century America
Format:Paperback
Publisher:New York University Press
Published:22nd Oct '12
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- Hardback£70.00(9780814748909)
This insightful examination of unproductivity reveals its cultural significance, as seen in Idle Threats, exploring its impact on American identity and literature.
In Idle Threats, Andrew Lyndon Knighton delves into the complex relationship between unproductivity and various cultural discourses. Drawing from a rich tapestry of archival materials, literary works, and cultural references, the book explores how the notion of unproductivity intertwines with themes of masculinity, the value of art, and the allure of the frontier. Knighton presents a compelling argument that unproductivity is not merely a lack of action, but rather a significant aspect of American identity that influences the understanding of individuality, knowledge, and the experience of time and space.
The 19th century was marked by a fascination with idleness, as reflected in the writings about characters like Rip Van Winkle and Bartleby. These figures embody the cultural ambivalence towards work, highlighting a national obsession with the idea of leisure and its implications for societal norms. Idle Threats documents this intricate relationship, revealing how idle practices can serve as a source of literary and cultural production, rather than a mere hindrance.
Knighton offers a fresh perspective on the so-called 'productivity of the unproductive,' suggesting that American modernity has reshaped how individuals engage with their own activities. By examining the seductive allure of idleness alongside its potential threats to industriousness, Idle Threats invites readers to reconsider the value of unproductivity in both historical and contemporary contexts.
Critics and readers often speak of literary works. And while a lot of energy has been expended on pondering the qualities and attributes that make something literary, comparatively little consideration has been given to exploring why it is commonplace to speak of textual artifact as a 'work....' Though Andrew Lyndon Knighton's Idle Threats: Men and the Limits of Productivity in Nineteenth-Century Americadoes not necessarily examine these implied protocols, it does dwell on the economic and aesthetic imperatives to transform leisure and repose into productive experience. -- Russ Castronovo * The New England Quarterly *
Knighton's arguments about the imperatives attached to the conduct of capitalist time- posed through readings of literary and visual culture- ground a theoretical inquiry into the impossibility of posing a demand for more robust productivity without invoking the specter of its opposite: idleness. -- Dana D. Nelson * Journal of American History *
With wit and sophistication, Andrew Knighton engages familiar writing by Irving, Thoreau, Melville, and Gilman and others in a fresh critical and theoretical inquiry into the experiences of time and space that continue to define capitalist modernity. -- Thomas Augst,New York University
Knighton traces these tensions through a variety of cultural forms, beginning with the literary and extending through landscape painting; narratives of the western frontier, along with associated developments in urban and regional planning; and works in popular physiology and political economy...he deftly traces the development of the concept of repose as a counterpoint to labor and an antidote to the sheer productivity now viewed as the hallmark of both the age and the estimable man. * American Literature *
ISBN: 9780814789391
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 386g
272 pages