Reviews
Luck's focus on the phenomenological experience of ownership in the early nineteenth century is new and revealing. Whether looking at the frontier romance, the urban gothic, the domestic novel, or the plantation narrative, Luck convincingly shows how changing notions of property were intimately linked to evolving notions of embodiment and selfhood. -----David Anthony, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Written with force and grace, The Body of Property shows how antebellum literature stepped in to address questions that legal thought largely evaded: how do we come to own a thing? Why does property require bodies? Offering us a 'phenomenology of possession' in authors ranging from Brown to Stoddard, from J. P. Kennedy to George Lippard, Chad Luck provides a genuinely new account of the cultural work undertaken by antebellum fiction, as it thinks through embodiment and possession in a range of social locations: frontier, parlor, plantation, cityscape. This is a terrific book, well-researched, theoretically nimble, and full of interpretive insight. -----Jonathan Elmer, Indiana University, "Luck combines a truly impressive archive of antebellum writing, legal and cultural history, Enlightenment philosophy, and phenomenology with an innovative methodology to tell a new history of property in American literature and culture -- the history of what property feels like, from the body to the spaces of the home, the plantation, and the city." -----Jennifer Greiman, University at Albany, SUNY, "Luck combines a truly impressive archive of antebellum writing, legal and cultural history, Enlightenment philosophy, and phenomenology with an innovative methodology to tell a new history of property in American literature and culture -- the history of what property feels like, from the body to the spaces of the home, the plantation, and the city." --Jennifer Greiman, University at Albany, SUNY, "Written with force and grace, The Body of Property shows how antebellum literature stepped in to address questions that legal thought largely evaded: how do we come to own a thing? Why does property require bodies? Offering us a 'phenomenology of possession' in authors ranging from Brown to Stoddard, from J. P. Kennedy to George Lippard, Chad Luck provides a genuinely new account of the cultural work undertaken by antebellum fiction, as it thinks through embodiment and possession in a range of social locations: frontier, parlor, plantation, cityscape. This is a terrific book, well-researched, theoretically nimble, and full of interpretive insight."--Jonathan Elmer, Indiana University "Luck's focus on the phenomenological experience of ownership in the early nineteenth century is new and revealing. Whether looking at the frontier romance, the urban gothic, the domestic novel, or the plantation narrative, Luck convincingly shows how changing notions of property were intimately linked to evolving notions of embodiment and selfhood."--David Anthony, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale "Luck combines a truly impressive archive of antebellum writing, legal and cultural history, Enlightenment philosophy, and phenomenology with an innovative methodology to tell a new history of property in American literature and culture--the history of what property feels like, from the body to the spaces of the home, the plantation, and the city."--Jennifer Greiman, University at Albany, SUNY