Social Criticism And Nineteenth Century American Fictions

Author : Robert Shulman
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 1989
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 082620726X

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Social Criticism and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions by Robert Shulman Pdf

The changing market society of the nineteenth century had a deep impact on American writers and their works. The writers responded with important insights into the alienation brought on by the country's capitalist development. Shulman uses theorists from Tocqueville to Gramsci and the New Left historians, as well as drawing on other recent historical and critical studies, to examine major nineteenth-century American works as they illuminate and are illuminated by their society. Using works by Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Chesnutt, Walt Witman, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser, he shows the urgency, energy, and variety of response that capitalism elicited from a range of writers.

Author : Donald Pizer
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 1976
Category : American literature
ISBN : UVA:X000005828

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Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-century American Literature by Donald Pizer Pdf

Author : David Howard,John Lucas,John Goode
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 286 pages
File Size : 54,7 Mb
Release : 2016-08-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781317198963

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Tradition and Tolerance in Nineteenth Century Fiction by David Howard,John Lucas,John Goode Pdf

First published in 1966, this book collects six essays which discuss the experience of social change as it reveals itself in the work of several nineteenth century novelists. In the novels studied, and the discussion of fiction that follows, the authors argue that all these novelists’ attempts to confront social change — to connect old with new, past with present and the attempted inclusiveness of vision in a changing society — sooner or later fail. The essays are polemic in arguing against the contemporary critical consensus that this failure is a limitation of imaginative intelligence rather than an endorsement of a receding past which the process of change was charged with destroying.

Author : Russ Castronovo
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 456 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 2014-02
Category : History
ISBN : 9780199355891

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The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature by Russ Castronovo Pdf

The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature will offer a cutting-edge assessment of the period's literature, offering readers practical insights and proactive strategies for exploring novels, poems, and other literary creations.

Author : Hugh McIntosh
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2018-09-24
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780813941660

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Guilty Pleasures by Hugh McIntosh Pdf

Guilty pleasures in one’s reading habits are nothing new. Late-nineteenth-century American literary culture even championed the idea that popular novels need not be great. Best-selling novels arrived in the public sphere as at once beloved and contested objects, an ambivalence that reflected and informed America’s cultural insecurity. This became a matter of nationhood as well as aesthetics: the amateurism of popular narratives resonated with the discourse of new nationhood. In Guilty Pleasures, Hugh McIntosh examines reactions to best-selling fiction in the United States from 1850 to 1920, including reader response to such best-sellers as Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ben Hur, and Trilby as well as fictional representations—from Trollope to Baldwin—of American culture’s lack of artistic greatness. Drawing on a transatlantic archive of contemporary criticism, urban display, parody, and advertising, Guilty Pleasures thoroughly documents how the conflicted attitude toward popular novels shaped these ephemeral modes of response. Paying close attention to this material history of novel reading, McIntosh reveals how popular fiction’s unique status as socially saturating and aesthetically questionable inspired public reflection on what it meant to belong to a flawed national community.

Author : Jennifer Carol Cook
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780415978354

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Machine and Metaphor by Jennifer Carol Cook Pdf

First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author : Dieter Meindl
Publisher : University of Missouri Press
Page : 262 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0826210791

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American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the Grotesque by Dieter Meindl Pdf

By synthesizing Kayser's and Bakhtin's views of the grotesque and Heidegger's philosophy of Being, American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the Grotesque seeks to demonstrate that American fiction from Poe to Pynchon has tried to convey the existential dimension: the pre-individual totality or flow of life, which defines itself against the mind and its linguistic capacity. Dieter Meindl shows how the grotesque, through its self-contradictory nature, has been instrumental in expressing this reality-conception, an antirationalist stance in basic agreement with existential thought. The historical validity of this new metaphysics, which grants precedence to Being--the context of cognition--over the cognizant subject, must be upheld in the face of deconstructive animadversions upon any metaphysics of presence. The notion of decentering the subject, Meindl argues, did not originate with deconstruction. The existential grotesque confirms the protomodernist character of classic American fiction. Meindl traces its course through a number of well-known texts by Melville, James, Gilman, Anderson, Faulkner, and O'Connor, among others. To convey life conceived as motion, these writers had to capture--that is, immobilize--it in their art: an essentially distortive and, therefore, grotesque device. Melville's "Bartleby," dealing with a mort vivant, is the seminal text in this mode of indirectness. As opposed to the existential grotesque, which grants access to a preverbal realm, the linguistic grotesque of postmodern fiction works on the assumption that all reality is referable to language in a textual universe. American Fiction and the Metaphysics of the Grotesque will significantly alter our understanding of certain traditions in American literature.

Author : E. Miller Budick
Publisher : Macmillan Reference USA
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 1996
Category : Fiction
ISBN : UOM:39015040650536

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Nineteenth-century American Romance by E. Miller Budick Pdf

Nineteenth-century American romance, as a genre, is defined by the writings of a particular group of authors - James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James - all of whom are associated with one another in time and place. In this volume, Emily Miller Budick examines the genre both as a style and within a historical context. She interprets American romance as an evolving literary aesthetic and cultural philosophy - as an effort by a group of writers to produce what Noah Webster called an "American tongue", a language imbued with the values of democracy and pluralism.

Author : Mark Hawkins-Dady
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 1024 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Reference
ISBN : 9781135314170

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Reader's Guide to Literature in English by Mark Hawkins-Dady Pdf

Reader's Guide Literature in English provides expert guidance to, and critical analysis of, the vast number of books available within the subject of English literature, from Anglo-Saxon times to the current American, British and Commonwealth scene. It is designed to help students, teachers and librarians choose the most appropriate books for research and study.

Author : Martin Coyle,Peter Garside,Malcolm Kelsall,John Peck
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 1458 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2002-09-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781134977093

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Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism by Martin Coyle,Peter Garside,Malcolm Kelsall,John Peck Pdf

This Encyclopedia is the most comprehensive guide yet both to the nature and content of literature, and to literary criticism. In ninety essays by leading international critics and scholars, the volume covers both traditional topics such as literature and history, poetry, drama and the novel, and also newer topics such as the production and reception of literature. Current critical ideas are clearly and provocatively discussed, while the volume's arrangement reflects in a dynamic way the rich diversity of contemporary thinking about literature. Each essay seeks to provide the reader with a clear sense of the full significance of its subject as well as guidance on further reading. An essential work of reference, The Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism is a stimulating guide to the central preoccupations of contemporary critical thinking about literature. Special Features * Clearly written by scholars and critics of international standing for readers at all levels in many disciplines * In-depth essays covering all aspects, traditional and new, of literary studies past and present * Useful cross-references within the text, with full bibliographical references and suggestions for further reading * Single index of authors, terms, topics

Author : Keith Newlin
Publisher : Oxford Handbooks
Page : 733 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780190642891

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The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism by Keith Newlin Pdf

"The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Realism offers 35 original essays of fresh interpretations of the artistic and political challenges of representing life accurately. Organized by topic and theme, essays draw upon recent scholarship in literary and cultural studies to offer an authoritative and in-depth reassessment of major and minor figures and the contexts that shaped their work. One set of essays explores realism's genesis and its connection to previous and subsequent movements. Others examine the inclusiveness of representation, the circulation of texts, and the aesthetic representation of science, time, space, and the subjects of medicine, the New Woman, and the middle class. Still others trace the connection to other arts--poetry, drama, illustration, photography, painting, and film--and to pedagogic issues in the teaching of realism"--

Author : Leonard Cassuto,Clare Virginia Eby
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 268 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2004-02-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0521894654

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The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser by Leonard Cassuto,Clare Virginia Eby Pdf

The specially commissioned essays collected in this volume establish new parameters for both scholarly and classroom discussion of Dreiser. This Companion provides fresh perspectives on the frequently read classics, Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, as well as on topics of perennial interest, such as Dreiser's representation of the city and his prose style. The volume investigates topics such as his representation of masculinity and femininity, and his treatment of ethnicity. It is the most comprehensive introduction to Dreiser's work available.

Author : Emory Elliott
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 940 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Education
ISBN : 0231073607

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The Columbia History of the American Novel by Emory Elliott Pdf

Designed as a companion to The Columbia Literary History of the United States, this compilation of 31 major essays covers the American novel from the 1700s to the present, although the majority deal with the 20th century. Within each era, themes, genres, and topics such as realism, gender, romance, and technology are discussed in depth, as well as modern Canadian, Caribbean, and Latin American fiction. Each essayist selects only the authors who best illustrate the topic, thus subtly skewing the view of the literary scene at that time. The volume also covers women, minorities, popular fiction, and the book marketplace. ISBN 0-231-07360-7: $59.95.

Author : D. Traber
Publisher : Springer
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2007-02-19
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780230603578

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Whiteness, Otherness and the Individualism Paradox from Huck to Punk by D. Traber Pdf

Traber reexamines the practice of self-marginalization in Euro-American literature and popular culture that depict whites adopting varied markers of otherness to disengage from the dominant culture. He draws on critical theory, whiteness and cultural studies to counter an eager correlation between marginality and agency. The nonconformist cultural politics of these border crossings implode since the transgressive identity the protagonists desire relies upon, is built from, the center's values and definitions. An orthodox notion of individualism underpins each act of sovereignty as it rationalizes exploiting stereotypes of an Other constructed by the center. The work closes by positing a theory of identity based on Jean-Luc Nancy's concept of the emptied self. In recognizing the already mixed quality of being, identity is made a vacuous concept as the standards for determining self and difference become too slippery to hold.

Author : Hildegard Hoeller
Publisher : UPNE
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9781611683110

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From Gift to Commodity by Hildegard Hoeller Pdf

In this rich interdisciplinary study, Hildegard Hoeller argues that nineteenth-century American culture was driven by and deeply occupied with the tension between gift and market exchange. Rooting her analysis in the period's fiction, she shows how American novelists from Hannah Foster to Frank Norris grappled with the role of the gift based on trust, social bonds, and faith in an increasingly capitalist culture based on self-interest, market transactions, and economic reason. Placing the notion of sacrifice at the center of her discussion, Hoeller taps into the poignant discourse of modes of exchange, revealing central tensions of American fiction and culture.