Ideology and Classic American Literature

Ideology and Classic American Literature PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 472

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Book Description
For more than a decade, Americanists have been concerned with the problem of ideology, and have undertaken a broad reassessment of American literature and culture. This volume brings together some of the best work in this area.

Ideology and Classic American Literature

Ideology and Classic American Literature PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521273091
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 472

Get Book

Book Description
For more than a decade, Americanists have been concerned with the problem of ideology, and have undertaken a broad reassessment of American literature and culture. This volume brings together some of the best work in this area.

American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions

American Literature’s Aesthetic Dimensions PDF Author: Cindy Weinstein
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231520778
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Rethinking the category of aesthetics in light of recent developments in literary theory and social criticism, the contributors to this volume showcase the interpretive possibilities available to those who bring politics, culture, ideology, and conceptions of identity into their critiques. Essays combine close readings of individual works and authors with more theoretical discussions of aesthetic theory and its relation to American literature. In their introduction, Weinstein and Looby argue that aesthetics never left American literary critique. Instead, the essay casts the current "return to aesthetics" as the natural consequence of shortcomings in deconstruction and new historicism, which led to a reconfiguration of aesthetics. Subsequent essays demonstrate the value and versatility of aesthetic considerations in literature, from eighteenth-century poetry to twentieth-century popular music. Organized into four groups—politics, form, gender, and theory—contributors revisit the canonical works of Henry James, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Stephen Crane, introduce the overlooked texts of Constance Fenimore Woolson and Earl Lind, and unpack the complexities of the music of The Carpenters. Deeply rooted in an American context, these essays explore literature's aesthetic dimensions in connection to American liberty and the formation of political selfhood. Contributors include Edward Cahill, Ivy G. Wilson, June Ellison, Dorri Beam, Christopher Castiglia, Christopher Looby, Wendy Steiner, Cindy Weinstein, Trish Loughran, Jonathan Freedman, Elisa New, Dorothy Hale, Mary Esteve, Eric Lott, Sianne Ngai

Mastering Western Texts

Mastering Western Texts PDF Author: A. N. Kaul
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9788178240695
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This Volume Will Interest All Students Of English And American Studies; Colonialism And Nationalism; Culture And Gender Issues; The Complex Relation Between Literture And Society; And The Even More Complex Relationship Between Western Texts And Indian Leaders.

Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature

Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature PDF Author: Sam B Girgus
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349207233
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description


Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson

Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson PDF Author: Kate Stanley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108554199
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Practices of Surprise in American Literature After Emerson locates a paradoxical question - how does one prepare to be surprised? - at the heart of several major modernist texts. Arguing that this paradox of perception gives rise to an American literary methodology, this book dramatically reframes how practices of reading and writing evolved among modernist authors after Emerson. Whereas Walter Benjamin defines modernity as a 'series of shocks' inflicted from without, Emerson offers a countervailing optic that regards life as a 'series of surprises' unfolding from within. While Benjaminian shock elicits intimidation and defensiveness, Emersonian surprise fosters states of responsiveness and spontaneity whereby unexpected encounters become generative rather than enervating. As a study of how such states of responsiveness were cultivated by a post-Emerson tradition of writers and thinkers, this project displaces longstanding models of modernist perception defined by shock's passive duress, and proposes alternate models of reception that proceed from the active practice of surprise.

Grief Taboo in American Literature

Grief Taboo in American Literature PDF Author: Pamela A. Boker
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814713149
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
"A compelling, massively researched psychoanalytic study of the inability to mourn in Melville, Twain and Hemingway, and its roots in maternal loss".--Ann Douglas, author of TERRIBLE HONESTY: MONGREL MANHATTAN IN THE 1920S. "This insightful text is recommended for all students of American culture and literature".--CHOICE.

The Rites of Assent

The Rites of Assent PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317796187
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
The Rites of Assent examines the cultural strategies through which "America" served as a vehicle simultaneously for diversity and cohesion, fusion and fragmentation. Taking an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach, The Rites of Assent traces the meanings and purposes of "America" back to the colonial typology of mission, and specifically (in chapters on Puritan rhetoric, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the movement from Revival to Revolution) to the legacy of early New England.

Herman Melville and the American Calling

Herman Melville and the American Calling PDF Author: William V. Spanos
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791475645
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Argues that Herman Melville’s later work anticipates the resurgence of an American exceptionalist ethos underpinning the U.S.-led global “war on terror.”

American Literature, Culture, and Ideology

American Literature, Culture, and Ideology PDF Author: Henry Nash Smith
Publisher: New York : P. Lang
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
This collection of essays in memory of Henry Nash Smith considers American literature as both a product and an agent of culture and ideology. Included are a biographical essay on Henry Nash Smith by historian Henry F. May and «Mark Twain, Ritual Clown, » an important late essay by Smith, published here for the first time. Other distinguished contributors are Thomas F. Gossett, Eric J. Sundquist, Leo Marx, David Leverenz, Beverly R. Voloshin, Daniel Aaron, R.W.B. Lewis, Annette Kolodny, Sybil Weir, Larzer Ziff, Lorne Fienberg, Susan Gillman, Kermit Vanderbilt, and John S. Wright.

The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism

The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism PDF Author: Donald Pizer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521438766
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
This Companion examines a number of issues related to the terms realism and naturalism. The introduction seeks both to discuss the problems in the use of these two terms in relation to late nineteenth-century fiction and to describe the history of previous efforts to make the terms expressive of American writing of this period. The Companion includes ten essays which fall into four categories: essays on the historical context of realism and naturalism by Louis Budd and Richard Lehan; essays on critical approaches to the movements since the early 1970s by Michael Anesko, essays on the efforts to expand the canon of realism and naturalism by Elizabeth Ammons; and a full-scale discussion of ten major texts, from W. D. Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham to Jack London's The Call of the Wild, by John W. Crowley, Tom Quirk, J. C. Levenson, Blanche Gelfant, Barbara Hochman, and Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin.