Branding the Body American
Violence and Self-fashioning from The Scarlet Letter to American Psycho
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8894966 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sylvia Söderlind (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 63-81 |
| Publication date | 2008-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Canadian Review of American Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-7720 • E-ISSN: 1710-114X |
| Publisher | University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.3138/cras.38.1.63 |
| OpenAlex | W4253577151 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 10 |
This paper argues that The Scarlet Letter and American Psycho occupy particular historical moments in the same national allegory of American self-fashioning. Critical readings tend so see Hawthorne's self as particularly American while overlooking the “American” in Ellis's title. By reading labels, logos, and signs, I show that the self-fashioning depicted in American Psycho is explicitly tied to an idea of nation based on typological exclusionary practices. But, whereas Hawthorne's “A”—for “American”—has the power to transform both its wearer and its interpreters, thus transforming a typological label into an individualized expression of character, the empty logos and designer labels that pervade American Psycho inhibit any such transformation and turn interiority into pathology. Where Hawthorne was the “allegorist of the heart” of the nation, Ellis is the allegorist of the place where that heart used to be
Aesthetics · Allegory · American literature · Art · Character (mathematics · Interpreter · Literature · Logos Bible Software · Power (physics · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,06 |
| Citation span | 2009 - 2009 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |