{"product_id":"maladies-of-the-will-by-jennifer-l-fleissner-9780226822013","title":"Maladies of the Will","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn examination of the nineteenth-century American novel that argues for a new genealogy of the concept of the will.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhat 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 the will as prone to insufficiency or excess—from indecision to obsession, wild impulse to melancholic inertia. Jennifer Fleissner’s ambitious book shows how the novel’s attention to these maladies of the will enables an ongoing interrogation of modern premises from within.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eMaladies of the Will\u003c\/i\u003e reveals the nineteenth-century American novel's relation to a wide-ranging philosophical tradition, one highly relevant to our own tumultuous present. In works from \u003ci\u003eMoby-Dick\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Scarlet Letter\u003c\/i\u003e to Elizabeth Stoddard’s \u003ci\u003eThe Morgesons\u003c\/i\u003e and Charles W. Chesnutt’s \u003ci\u003eThe Marrow of Tradition\u003c\/i\u003e, both the will’s grandeur and its perversity emerge as it alternately aligns itself with and pits itself against a bigger Will—whether that of God, the state, society, history, or life itself.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt a time when invocations of autonomy appear alongside the medicalisation of many behaviours, and when democracy’s tenet of popular will has come into doubt, \u003ci\u003eMaladies of the Will\u003c\/i\u003e provides a road map to how we got here, and how we might think these vital dilemmas anew.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47455621873900,"sku":"9780226822013","price":199.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/81pi8BY01SL._SL1500.jpg?v=1774788764","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/maladies-of-the-will-by-jennifer-l-fleissner-9780226822013","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}