The Romance of Real Life

Charles Brockden Brown and the Origins of American Culture
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4214-3602-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 274 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 452 g

Originally published in 1994. The Romance of Real Life aims to reconstruct historically the life and writings of Charles Brockden Brown in terms of their cultural connection. Watts examines in detail Brown's early and later writings. By looking at these often-neglected works more closely, he offers a new perspective on the well-known novels from the late 1790s. Watts's synthetic look at genre as well as chronology reveals broader connections between Brown's literature and American society and culture in the decades of the early republic. Furthermore, Watts situates Brown's writings in terms of the interplay of text, context, and the self, with each factor recognized as mutually shaping the others. The Romance of Real Life incorporates sensitivity to the "social history of ideas," in which both the form and content of language remain rooted in the material experience of real life.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Watts, Steven

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Novel and the Market in the Early Republic
Chapter 2. The Lawyer and the Rhapsodist
Chapter 3. The Young Artist as Social Visionary
Chapter 4. The Major Novels (I): Fiction and Fragmentation
Chapter 5. The Major Novels (II): Deception and Disintegration
Chapter 6. The Writer as Bourgeois Moralist
Chapter 7. The Writer and the Liberal Ego
Notes
Bibliographic Essay
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Watts, Steven
Steven Watts is a professor of American intellectual and cultural history at the University of Missouri. He has contributed to the New York Times, Washington Post, and the New Republic. He is the author of Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream and The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century.