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Thankee, Massa

Thankee, Massa tural form without a predetermined content” because of its association with the amelioration movement (14). The workings of sympathetic identification, which proceeds from a perceived situation of similarity, turn toward differentiation (paralleling the theoretical formulations of race) when faced with the stoic suffering of slaves of Indians. Elaborating on Julie Ellison’s interpretations, Boulukos describes a dynamic of stoicism and sentiment, exhibited for example in Joseph Addison’s Cato, that “is premised on the difference that calls out for identification to transcend it” (69). In the case of the slave, this already difficult process of identification fractures or fails, evacuating activist sympathy in favor of pity or charity. But the crucial contrast here is between the older form of martyr-like suffering put forth by John Foxe (1563)—which invited repetition and the incorporation of individuals into a shared body—and this new sense of sympathy, which is offered as compensation for a policy of passivity or even complicity in the torture of colonial subjects. Although Boulukos’s intervention in studies of sentimentalism is no longer new, thanks to recent work by Felicity A. Nussbaum and Christopher Leslie Brown, his link to an earlier literature of torment and its parodic reincarnation in scenes of http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Novel: A Forum on Fiction Duke University Press

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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2011 by Novel, Inc.
ISSN
0029-5132
eISSN
1945-8509
DOI
10.1215/00295132-1164482
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

tural form without a predetermined content” because of its association with the amelioration movement (14). The workings of sympathetic identification, which proceeds from a perceived situation of similarity, turn toward differentiation (paralleling the theoretical formulations of race) when faced with the stoic suffering of slaves of Indians. Elaborating on Julie Ellison’s interpretations, Boulukos describes a dynamic of stoicism and sentiment, exhibited for example in Joseph Addison’s Cato, that “is premised on the difference that calls out for identification to transcend it” (69). In the case of the slave, this already difficult process of identification fractures or fails, evacuating activist sympathy in favor of pity or charity. But the crucial contrast here is between the older form of martyr-like suffering put forth by John Foxe (1563)—which invited repetition and the incorporation of individuals into a shared body—and this new sense of sympathy, which is offered as compensation for a policy of passivity or even complicity in the torture of colonial subjects. Although Boulukos’s intervention in studies of sentimentalism is no longer new, thanks to recent work by Felicity A. Nussbaum and Christopher Leslie Brown, his link to an earlier literature of torment and its parodic reincarnation in scenes of

Journal

Novel: A Forum on FictionDuke University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2011

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