A History of American Literature

Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-631-22134-0
Verlag: Wiley

Buch, Englisch, 912 Seiten, Format (B × H): 171 mm x 246 mm

This major new history of American literature from pre-Columbian times to the present is written in an informed but accessible style by one of the leading authorities in the field. While paying attention to the full range of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fiction that has been incorporated into the mainstream literary canon, it also looks at other forms, including oral literature, folktales, spirituals, the blues, the western, the detective story, the thriller, and science fiction. All this writing is placed in the context of American social and cultural history both before and after the formation of the United States.
Taking account of the radical changes that have occurred in our understanding of American literature over the past 30 years, this book concentrates above all on the plural character of culture in the United States, the conflicting forces at work in its history, and the continuing acts of imagination that constitute the making of this nation.

Zielgruppe

students of American literature, general readers

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gray, Richard

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The First Americans: American Literature Before And During The Colonial And Revolutionary Periods:

Native American Oral Traditions

Accounts Of Spanish And French Encounters With America

Accounts Written From An Anglo-American Perspective

Writing Of The Colonial And Revolutionary Periods

2. Inventing Americas: The Making Of American Literature 1800-1865:

The Making Of American Myths

The Making Of American Selves

The Making Of Many Americas

The Making Of American Fiction And Poetry

3. Reconstructing The Past, Reimagining The Future: The Development Of American Literature 1865-1900:

The Development Of Literary Regionalisms

The Development Of Literary Realism And Naturalism

The Development Of Womens Writing

The Development Of Many Americas

4. Making It New: The Emergence Of Modern American Literature 1900-1945:

Between Victorianism And Modernism

The Inventions Of Modernism

Traditionalism, Politics And Prophecy

Community And Identity

Mass Culture And The Writer

5. Negotiating The American Century: American Literature Since 1945:

Formalists And Confessionals

Beats, Prophets And Aesthetes

The Art And Politics Of Race

Realism And Its Discontents

Against Language And Genre

Creating New Americas

Über Autor(innen)

Richard Gray is Professor of American Literature at the University of Essex. Generally regarded as the leading European scholar in American literature, he is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy. His recent publications include Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region (1997), The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography (Blackwell Publishing, 1994) and Southern Aberrations: Writers of the American South and the Problems of Regionalism (2000). With Owen Robinson, he has also edited A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South (Blackwell Publishing, 2004).
University of Essex