The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 6, Prose Writing, 1910-1950
The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 6, Prose Writing, 1910-1950

Author: Sacvan Bercovitch

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 652

ISBN-13: 9780521497312

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Volume 6 of The Cambridge History of American Literature explores the emergence and flowering of modernism in the United States. David Minter provides a cultural history of the American novel from the 'lyric years' to World War I, through post-World War I disillusionment, to the consolidation of the Left in response to the mire of the Great Depression. Rafia Zafar tells the story of the Harlem Renaissance, detailing the artistic accomplishments of such diverse figures as Zora Neal Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Nella Larsen, and Richard Wright. Werner Sollors examines canonical texts as well as popular magazines and hitherto unknown immigrant writing from the period. Taken together these narratives cover the entire range of literary prose written in the first half of the twentieth century, offering a model of literary history for our times, focusing as they do on the intricate interplay between text and context.

A History of American Literature 1900 - 1950
A History of American Literature 1900 - 1950

Author: Christopher MacGowan

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2024-05-13

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 1119072778

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A look at the first five decades of 20th century American literature, covering a wide range of literary works, figures, and influences A History of American Literature 1900-1950 is a current and well-balanced account of the main literary figures, connections, and ideas that characterized the first half of the twentieth century. In this readable, highly informative book, the author explores significant developments in American drama, fiction, and poetry, and discusses how the literature of the period influenced, and was influenced by, cultural trends in both the United States and abroad. Considering works produced during America’s rise to prominence on the world stage from both regional and international perspectives, MacGowan provides readers with keen insights into the literature of the period in relation to America’s transition from an agrarian nation to an industrial power, the racial and economic discrimination of Black and Native American populations, the greater financial and social independence of women, the economic boom of the 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, the impact of world wars, massive immigration, political and ideological clashes, and more. Encompassing five decades of literary and cultural diversity in one volume, A History of American Literature 1900-1950: Covers American theater, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, memoirs, magazines and literary publications, and popular media Discusses the ways writers dramatized the immense social, economic, cultural, and political changes in America throughout the first half of the twentieth century Explores themes and influences of Modernist poets, expatriate novelists, and literary publications founded by women and African-Americans Features the work of Black writers, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish Americans A History of American Literature 1900-1950 is essential reading for all students in upper-level American literature courses as well as general readers looking to better understand the literary tradition of the United States.

Predicting the Past
Predicting the Past

Author: Michael Boyden

Publisher: Leuven University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 9058677311

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Drawing from the social theories of Niklas Luhmann and Mary Douglas, Predicting the Past advocates a reflexive understanding of the paradoxical institutional dynamic of American literary history as a professional discipline and field of study. Contrary to most disciplinary accounts, Michael Boyden resists the utopian impulse to offer supposedly definitive solutions for the legitimation crises besetting American literature studies by "going beyond" its inherited racist, classist, and sexist underpinnings. Approaching the existence of the American literary tradition as a typically modern problem generating diverse but functionally equivalent solutions, Boyden argues how its peculiarity does not, as is often supposed, reside in its restrictive exclusivity but rather in its massive inclusivity, which drives it to constantly revert to a self-negating "beyond" perspective. Predicting the Past covers a broad range of literary histories and reference works, from Rufus Griswold's 1847 Prose Writers of America to Sacvan Bercovitch's monumental Cambridge History of American Literature. Throughout, Boyden focuses on particular themes and topics illustrating the self-induced complexity of American literary history, such as the early "Anglocentric" roots theories of American literature; the debate on contemporary authors in the age of naturalism; the plurilingual ethnocentrism of the pioneer Americanists of the mid-twentieth century; and the genealogical misrepresentation of founding figures such as Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, and Robert Lowell.

Ethnic Modernism
Ethnic Modernism

Author: Werner Sollors

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780674030916

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Werner Sollors's monograph looks into how African American, European immigrant and other minority writers gave the United States its increasingly multicultural self-awareness, focusing on their use of the strategies opened up by modernism.

Literary Research and the American Modernist Era
Literary Research and the American Modernist Era

Author: Robert N. Matuozzi

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2008-07-31

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0810862379

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Characterized by its move away from Romanticism and toward mundane, every day subjects, as well as incorporating such ideas as metanarrative, stream of consciousness, and disjointed timelines, the American Modernist Era was at its heyday during the years 1914-1949. It produced such great authors as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and memorable works like As I Lay Dying and The Great Gatsby. Literary Research and the American Modernist Era offers the scholar and researcher a clear introduction to the best contemporary library resources and practices for researching American modernist writing. Graduate students, advanced undergraduates, researchers, and scholars specializing in American modernist writing will improve their information skills and fluency, whether in the real or the virtual library. Even those lacking access to some of the resources described here can profit from this overview of literary research because it will help them frame questions, indicate where to go for answers, and demonstrate useful connections between many of the secondary scholarly sources. This guide offers a coherent account of how contemporary research skills and resources can complement one another in helping the scholar effectively deal with typical challenges they encounter in their work

Literary Research and the American Realism and Naturalism Period
Literary Research and the American Realism and Naturalism Period

Author: Linda L. Stein

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2008-12-12

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780810862425

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Literary Research and the American Realism and Naturalism Period: Strategies and Sources will help those interested in researching this era. Authors Linda L. Stein and Peter J. Lehu emphasize research methodology and outline the best practices for the research process, paying attention to the unique challenges inherent in conducting studies of national literature.

The Trouble in Room 519
The Trouble in Room 519

Author: Thomas Aiello

Publisher: LSU Press

Published: 2021-08-18

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0807175986

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At approximately seven o’clock in the evening on May 7, 1950, Gordon Malherbe Hillman filled an empty bottle with water, capped it, and walked into his mother’s room in the pair’s fifth-floor suite at Boston’s luxurious Copley Plaza Hotel. He then edged up behind the semi-invalid woman and bludgeoned her to death. Hotel staff had planned to evict the two the following day after several weeks of unpaid rent. Mounting debts had finally broken the fifty-year-old Hillman, a now-struggling author of mixed success, but it had not always been that way, as Thomas Aiello shows in his study of the life and work of this forgotten midcentury figure. As a youth, Hillman attended the prestigious Noble and Greenough School near Boston. Pursuing a career as a writer, he published several dozen pieces of short fiction and a critically acclaimed novel, Fortune’s Cup (1941). Hollywood studios purchased the rights to two of his stories and made them into films, The Great Man Votes (1939) and Here I Am a Stranger (1940). But Hillman remained, for the most part, a middling magazine writer like the majority of fiction authors working during the Depression. Although most did not resort to acts of manic violence, Hillman’s tenuous position in literary circles, along with his gradual descent into financial ruin, proved a far more common tale than the stories of literary success often pored over by critics and historians of this period. In The Trouble in Room 519: Money, Matricide, and Marginal Fiction in the Early Twentieth Century, Aiello weaves a compelling true crime narrative into his exploration of the economics of magazine fiction and the strains placed on authors by the publishing industry prior to World War II. Examining Hillman’s writing as exemplary of Depression-era popular fiction, Aiello includes eight stories written by Hillman and originally published in prominent midcentury American magazines, including Collier’s, Liberty, and McCall’s, to provide additional context and insight into this trying time and tragic life.

A Companion to the Modern American Novel, 1900 - 1950
A Companion to the Modern American Novel, 1900 - 1950

Author: John T. Matthews

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-03-25

Total Pages: 790

ISBN-13: 111866163X

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This cutting-edge Companion is a comprehensive resource for the study of the modern American novel. Published at a time when literary modernism is being thoroughly reassessed, it reflects current investigations into the origins and character of the movement as a whole. Brings together 28 original essays from leading scholars Allows readers to orient individual works and authors in their principal cultural and social contexts Contributes to efforts to recover minority voices, such as those of African American novelists, and popular subgenres, such as detective fiction Directs students to major relevant scholarship for further inquiry Suggests the many ways that “modern”, “American” and “fiction” carry new meanings in the twenty-first century

A Mirror for History
A Mirror for History

Author: Marc Egnal

Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press

Published: 2024-04-19

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1621908682

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In A Mirror for History, author Marc Egnal uses novels and art to provide a new understanding of American society. The book argues that the arc of middle-class culture reflects the evolution of the American economy from the near-subsistence agriculture of the 1750s to the extraordinarily unequal society of the twenty-first century. Fiction offers a rich source for this analysis. By delving deep into the souls of characters and their complex worlds, novels shed light on the dreams, hopes, and goals of individuals and reveal the structures that shape character’s lives. Additionally, paintings of the time periods expand upon these insights drawn from literature. Egnal’s lively exploration of the changing economy, fiction, art, and American values is organized into four expansive periods—the Sentimental Era, Genteel America, Modern Society, and Post-Modern America. Within that framework, A Mirror for History looks at topics such as masculinity, childhood, the status of women, the outlook of African Americans, the role of religion, and varying views of capitalism. Readers will be enthralled to find discussions of overlooked novels and paintings as well as discover new approaches to familiar pieces. A Mirror for History examines over one hundred authors and dozens of artists and their works, presented here in full color.