Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction

Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction PDF Author: Wisam Abughosh Chaleila
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100032818X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
"The Melting Pot," "The Land of The Free," "The Land of Opportunity." These tropes or nicknames apparently reflect the freedom and open-armed welcome that the United States of America offers. However, the chronicles of history do not complement that image. These historical happenings have not often been brought into the focus of Modernist literary criticism, though their existence in the record is clear. This book aims to discuss these chronicles, displaying in great detail the underpinnings and subtle references of racism and xenophobia embedded so deeply in both fictional and real personas, whether they are characters, writers, legislators, or the common people. In the main chapters, literary works are dissected so as to underline the intolerance hidden behind words of righteousness and blind trust, as if such is the norm. Though history is taught, it is not so thoroughly examined. To our misfortune, we naively think that bigoted ideas are not a thing we could become afflicted with. They are antiques from the past – yet they possessed many hundreds of people and they surround us still. Since we’ve experienced very little change, it seems discipline is necessary to truly attempt to be rid of these ideas.

Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction

Racism and Xenophobia in Early Twentieth-Century American Fiction PDF Author: Wisam Abughosh Chaleila
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100032818X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
"The Melting Pot," "The Land of The Free," "The Land of Opportunity." These tropes or nicknames apparently reflect the freedom and open-armed welcome that the United States of America offers. However, the chronicles of history do not complement that image. These historical happenings have not often been brought into the focus of Modernist literary criticism, though their existence in the record is clear. This book aims to discuss these chronicles, displaying in great detail the underpinnings and subtle references of racism and xenophobia embedded so deeply in both fictional and real personas, whether they are characters, writers, legislators, or the common people. In the main chapters, literary works are dissected so as to underline the intolerance hidden behind words of righteousness and blind trust, as if such is the norm. Though history is taught, it is not so thoroughly examined. To our misfortune, we naively think that bigoted ideas are not a thing we could become afflicted with. They are antiques from the past – yet they possessed many hundreds of people and they surround us still. Since we’ve experienced very little change, it seems discipline is necessary to truly attempt to be rid of these ideas.

Trauma and Racial Difference in Twentieth-century American Literature

Trauma and Racial Difference in Twentieth-century American Literature PDF Author: Lisa Woolfork
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Journal of American Culture

Journal of American Culture PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Popular culture
Languages : en
Pages : 926

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Tears of Rage

Tears of Rage PDF Author: Shelly Brivic
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807149322
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
In this provocative study, Shelly Brivic presents the history of the twentieth-century American novel as a continuous narrative dialogue between white and black voices. Exploring four of the most renowned and challenging works written between 1930 and 1990 -- William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Richard Wright's Native Son, Thomas Pynchon's V., and Toni Morrison's Beloved -- Brivic traces how these works progress through the interaction of white and black perspectives toward confronting the calamity of slavery and its reverberating aftermath and continuing legacy. Brivic shows how one novel leads ineluctably to the next and how the four works in a sense form one continuous narrative: with Faulkner's attack on the racial system in Absalom, Absalom! in the 1930s, a literary space opened for Wright's devastating novel of protest. Through the character of Bigger Thomas, Wright's Native Son exposes a virtually incurable division in American ideologies, which leads to the multiplying perspectives of postmodernism in Pynchon's V. Arriving at the crest of the civil rights movement, V. questions Western systems of control, laying a foundation for a world outside the white one, and so providing a basis for the African view of reality presented in Morrison's Beloved. The emergence of African consciousness in American literature exemplified across these works has had, and continues to have, Brivic concludes, the potential not only to redress ongoing injustices but to bring about a new conception of the American universe and its laws of reality. Striking in both the selection of novels and the connections Brivic draws among them, Tears of Rage advances understanding of the destructive nature of racism and the possibilities for overcoming its effects through literature.

Twentieth-century Literary Criticism

Twentieth-century Literary Criticism PDF Author: Gale Research Company
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literature, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
Excerpts from criticism of the works of novelists, poets, playwrights, and other creative writers, 1900-1960.

The City, the Immigrant, and American Fiction, 1880-1920

The City, the Immigrant, and American Fiction, 1880-1920 PDF Author: David M. Fine
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Expectations for the Millennium

Expectations for the Millennium PDF Author: Peter H. Buckingham
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Early in the twentieth century, American socialists dared to dream of a future based on cooperation rather than competition. Socialism was a movement broad enough to encompass many points of view regarding the Red millennium. Socialist women, novelists, newspaper editors, and civil rights advocates, Christian socialists and Wobblies strained their eyes to see a future cooperative Commonwealth. Edward Bellamy portrayed socialism in the year 2000 for millions of readers in his novels as applied Christianity. Bellamy and other utopian novelists, including Jack London and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tried to imagine the role of women in the expected new order. Christian socialists put their faith in a future Kingdom of God on earth that honored the ideas of Karl Marx. Radical newspaper editors in Kansas, Missouri, and Texas attempted to lay out the imagined transition to socialism to their readers in simple, straightforward language that made the goal seem readily obtainable. Mormons, disappointed in the changing nature of their faith, pondered a possible socialist future. Others, such as William English Walling, worked for a time ahead that was both socialist and colorblind. Challenging the notion that they had no concrete vision, this book of essays examines the many ways in which early 20th century American socialists imagined their future.

Twentieth-century American Science-fiction Writers

Twentieth-century American Science-fiction Writers PDF Author: David Cowart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Profiles approximately one hundred American science fiction authors who began writing between 1900 and 1970, presenting primary and secondary bibliographies and illustrated biographical essays that chronicle each writer's career in detail; and includes eight essays on the genre and its fandom.

A Question of Character

A Question of Character PDF Author: Cathy Boeckmann
Publisher: American Literary Realism and
ISBN: 9780817352974
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Boeckmann links character, literary genre, and science, revealing how major literary works both contributed to and disrupted the construction of race in turn-of-the-century America. In A Question of Character, Cathy Boeckmann establishes a strong link between racial questions and the development of literary traditions at the end of the 19th century in America. This period saw the rise of "scientific racism," which claimed that the races were distinguished not solely by exterior appearance but also by a set of inherited character traits. As Boeckmann explains, this emphasis on character meant that race was not only a thematic concern in the literature of the period but also a generic or formal one as well. Boeckmann explores the intersections between race and literary history by tracing the language of character through both scientific and literary writing. Nineteenth-century pseudo-sciences such as phrenology and physiognomy had a vocabulary for discussing racial character that overlapped conceptually with the conventions for portraying race in literature. Through close readings of novels by Thomas Dixon, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, Charles Chesnutt, and James Weldon Johnson--each of which deals with a black character "passing" as white--Boeckmann shows how this emphasis on character relates to the shift from romantic and sentimental fiction to realism. Because each of these genres had very specific conventions regarding the representation of character, genres often dictated how races could be depicted.

Choice

Choice PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Academic libraries
Languages : en
Pages : 1118

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Book Description