The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 7, Prose Writing, 1940-1990

The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 7, Prose Writing, 1940-1990 PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521497329
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 824

Book Description
Volume VII of the Cambridge History of American Literature examines a broad range of American literature of the past half-century, revealing complex relations to changes in society. Christopher Bigsby discusses American dramatists from Tennessee Williams to August Wilson, showing how innovations in theatre anticipated a world of emerging countercultures and provided America with an alternative view of contemporary life. Morris Dickstein describes the condition of rebellion in fiction from 1940 to 1970, linking writers as diverse as James Baldwin and John Updike. John Burt examines writers of the American South, describing the tensions between modernization and continued entanglements with the past. Wendy Steiner examines the postmodern fictions since 1970, and shows how the questioning of artistic assumptions has broadened the canon of American literature. Finally, Cyrus Patell highlights the voices of Native American, Asian American, Chicano, gay and lesbian writers, often marginalized but here discussed within and against a broad set of national traditions.

The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 7, Prose Writing, 1940-1990

The Cambridge History of American Literature: Volume 7, Prose Writing, 1940-1990 PDF Author: Sacvan Bercovitch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521497329
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 824

Book Description
Volume VII of the Cambridge History of American Literature examines a broad range of American literature of the past half-century, revealing complex relations to changes in society. Christopher Bigsby discusses American dramatists from Tennessee Williams to August Wilson, showing how innovations in theatre anticipated a world of emerging countercultures and provided America with an alternative view of contemporary life. Morris Dickstein describes the condition of rebellion in fiction from 1940 to 1970, linking writers as diverse as James Baldwin and John Updike. John Burt examines writers of the American South, describing the tensions between modernization and continued entanglements with the past. Wendy Steiner examines the postmodern fictions since 1970, and shows how the questioning of artistic assumptions has broadened the canon of American literature. Finally, Cyrus Patell highlights the voices of Native American, Asian American, Chicano, gay and lesbian writers, often marginalized but here discussed within and against a broad set of national traditions.

American Literature & the Culture Wars

American Literature & the Culture Wars PDF Author: Gregory S. Jay
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801484223
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Book Description
Gregory S. Jay boldly challenges the future of American literary studies. Why pursue the study and teaching of a distinctly American literature? What is the appropriate purpose and scope of such pursuits? Is the notion of a traditional canon of great books out of date? Where does American literature leave off and Mexican or Caribbean or Canadian or postcolonial literature begin? Are today's campus conflicts fueled more by economics or ideology? Jay addresses these questions and others relating to American literary studies to explain why this once arcane academic discipline found itself so often in the news during the culture wars of the 1990s. While asking some skeptical questions about new directions and practices, Jay argues forcefully in favor of opening the borders of American literary and cultural analysis. He relates the struggle for representation in literary theory to a larger cultural clash over the meaning and justice of representation, then shows how this struggle might expand both the contents and the teaching of American literature. In an account of the vexed legacy of the Declaration of Independence, he provides a historical context for the current quarrels over literature and politics. Prominent among these debates are those over multiculturalism, which Jay takes up in an essay on the impasses of identity politics. In closing, he considers how the field of comparative American cultural studies might be constructed.

Deaf American Literature

Deaf American Literature PDF Author: Cynthia Peters
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
ISBN: 9781563680946
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

Book Description
"The moment when a society must contend with a powerful language other than its own is a decisive point in its evolution. This moment is occurring now in American society". Peters explains precisely how ASL literature achieved this moment, tracing its past and predicting its future in this trailblazing study. Peters connects ASL literature to the literary canon with the archetypal notion of carnival as "the counterculture of the dominated". Throughout history carnivals have been opportunities for the "low", disenfranchised elements of society to displace their "high" counterparts. Citing the Deaf community's long tradition of "literary nights" and festivals like the Deaf Way, Peters recognizes similar forces at work in the propagation of ASL literature. The agents of this movement, Deaf artists and ASL performers -- "Tricksters", as Peters calls them -- jump between the two cultures and languages. Through this process they create a synthesis of English literary content reinterpreted in sign language, which also raises the profile of ASL as a distinct art form in itself. Peters applies her analysis to the craft's landmark works, including Douglas Bullard's novel Islay and Ben Bahan's video-recorded narrative Bird of a Different Feather. Deaf American Literature, the only work of its kind, is its own seminal moment in the emerging discipline of ASL literary criticism.

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature PDF Author: Hana Wirth-Nesher
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139826476
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
For more than two hundred years, Jews have played important roles in the development of American literature. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature addresses a wide array of themes and approaches to the distinct yet multifaceted body of Jewish American literature. Essays examine writing from the 1700s to major contemporary writers such as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth. Topics covered include literary history, immigration and acculturation, Yiddish and Hebrew literature, popular culture, women writers, literary theory and poetics, multilingualism, the Holocaust, and contemporary fiction. This collection of specially commissioned essays by leading figures discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike.

American Literature from 1600 Through the 1850s

American Literature from 1600 Through the 1850s PDF Author: Britannica Educational Publishing
Publisher: Britannica Educational Publishing
ISBN: 1615302336
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Book Description
Fiercely nationalistic, the first prominent American writers exhibited a profound pride in the territory that would come to be known as the United States. Predating even the Declaration of Independence, much early American writing entailed commentary on the newly developing American society. This volume examines the literature of the country in its nascence and writers such as Poe, Hawthorne, and Emerson, who helped cultivate a uniquely American voice.

Cyclopædia of American Literature

Cyclopædia of American Literature PDF Author: Evert Augustus Duyckinck
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 1116

Book Description


Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction

Modern Latin American Literature: A Very Short Introduction PDF Author: Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199921059
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
This Very Short Introduction chronicles the trends and traditions of modern Latin American literature, arguing that Latin American literature developed as a continent-wide phenomenon, not just an assemblage of national literatures, in moments of political crisis. With the Spanish American War came Modernismo, the end of World War I and the Mexican Revolution produced the avant-garde, and the Cuban Revolution sparked a movement in the novel that came to be known as the Boom. Within this narrative, the author covers all of the major writers of Latin American literature, from Andrés Bello and José María de Heredia, through Borges and García Márquez, to Fernando Vallejo and Roberto Bolaño.

Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature

Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature PDF Author: Lawrence Normand
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441101918
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature explores the ways in which 20th-century literature has been influenced by Buddhism, and has been, in turn, a major factor in bringing about Buddhism's increasing spread and influence in the West. Focussing on Britain and the United States, Buddhism's influence on a range of key literary texts will be examined in the context of those societies' evolving modernity. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot, Hermann Hesse, Virginia Woolf, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, J. D. Salinger, Iris Murdoch, Maxine Hong Kingston. This book brings together for the first time a series of context-rich interpretations that demonstrate the importance of literature in this ongoing cultural change in Britain and the United States.

A study guide for American Literature to 1900

A study guide for American Literature to 1900 PDF Author: Mª Teresa Gibert Maceda
Publisher: Editorial Universitaria Ramon Areces
ISBN: 8480047488
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
Esta guía esta pensada para utilizarse conjuntamente con el libro American literature to 1900 de la misma autora y editado por la misma editorial. Ofrece los siguientes recursos adicionales como un extenso material complementario que ayuda y guía al alumno a lo largo de las 24 unidades, una colección de veinte ejemplos de exámenes y un glosario con una lista de los términos más importantes de la literatura en general y de la literatura americana en particular.

Central American Literatures as World Literature

Central American Literatures as World Literature PDF Author: Sophie Esch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501391887
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
Challenging the notion that Central American literature is a marginal space within Latin American literary and world literary production, this collection positions and discusses Central American literature within the recently revived debates on world literature. This groundbreaking volume draws on new scholarship on global, transnational, postcolonial, translational, and sociological perspectives on the region's literature, expanding and challenging these debates by focusing on the heterogenous literatures of Central America and its diasporas. Contributors discuss poems, testimonios, novels, and short stories in relation to center-periphery, cosmopolitan, and Internationalist paradigms. Central American Literatures as World Literature explores the multiple ways in which Central American literature goes beyond or against the confines of the nation-state, especially through the indigenous, Black, and migrant voices.