Jennifer L. Fleissner

An examination of the nineteenth-century American novel that argues for a new genealogy of the concept of the will. What if the modern person were defined not by reason or sentiment, as Enlightenment thinkers hoped, but by will? Western modernity rests on the notion of the autonomous subject, able to chart a path toward self-determination. Yet novelists have often portrayed...

An examination of the nineteenth-century American novel that argues for a new genealogy of the concept of the will. What if the modern person were defined not by reason or sentiment, as Enlightenment thinkers hoped, but by will? Western modernity rests on the notion of the autonomous subject, able to chart a path toward self-determination. Yet novelists have often portrayed...