A compilation of essays focusing on the significance of material culture to Cather s work and Cather scholarship.
Willa Cather and Material Culture is a collection of 11 new essays that tap into a recent and resurgent interest among Cather scholars in addressing her work and her career through the lens of cultural studies. One of the volume's primary purposes is to demonstrate the extent to which Cather did participate in her culture and to correct the commonplace view of her as a literary connoisseur set apart from her times.
The contributors explore both the objects...
A compilation of essays focusing on the significance of material culture to Cather s work and Cather scholarship.
Examining American realist fiction as it was informed and shaped by the music of the period, Sounding Real sheds new light on the profound musical and cultural change at the turn of the twentieth century. Sounding Real by Cristina L. Ruotolo examines landmark changes in American musical standards and tastes in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and the way they are reflected in American literature of the period. Whereas other interdisciplinary approaches to music and literature often focus on more recent popular music and black music that began with blues and...
Examining American realist fiction as it was informed and shaped by the music of the period, Sounding Real sheds new light on the profound musi...
Fighting Words offers an entirely new understanding of what literary naturalism is and why it matters.Ira Wells, countering the standard narrative of literary naturalism s much-touted concern with environmental and philosophical determinism, draws attention to the polemical essence of the genre and demonstrates how literary naturalists engaged instead with explosive political and cultural issues that remain fervently debated today. Naturalist writers, Wells argues in Fighting Words, are united less by a coherent philosophy than by an attitude, a posture of aggressive...
Fighting Words offers an entirely new understanding of what literary naturalism is and why it matters.Ira Wells, countering the standard narrat...
"Artistic Liberties" is a landmark study of the illustrations that originally accompanied now-classic works of American literary realism and the ways editors, authors, and illustrators vied for authority over the publications. Though today, we commonly read major works of nineteenth-century American literature in unillustrated paperbacks or anthologies, many of them first appeared as magazine serials, accompanied by ample illustrations that sometimes made their way into the serials first printings as books. The graphic artists creating these illustrations often visually addressed...
"Artistic Liberties" is a landmark study of the illustrations that originally accompanied now-classic works of American literary realism and the ways ...
Twain scholar Michael J. Kiskis opens this fascinating new exploration of Twain with the observation that most readers have no idea that Samuel Clemens was the father of four and that he lived through the deaths of three of his children as well as his wife. In Mark Twain at Home: How Family Shaped Twain's Fiction, Kiskis persuasively argues that not only was Mark Twain not, as many believe, "antidomestic," but rather that home and family were the muse and core message of his writing. Mark Twain was the child of a loveless marriage and a homelife over which hovered the constant...
Twain scholar Michael J. Kiskis opens this fascinating new exploration of Twain with the observation that most readers have no idea that Samuel Clemen...
Harold K. Bush's Continuing Bonds with the Dead examines the profound transfiguration that the death of a child wrought on the literary work of nineteenth-century American writers. Taking as his subjects Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and W. E. B. Du Bois, Bush demonstrates how the death of a child became the defining "before-and-after moment" in their lives as adults and as artists. In narrating their struggles, Bush maps the intense field of creative energy induced by reverberating waves of parental grief and the larger nineteenth-century...
Harold K. Bush's Continuing Bonds with the Dead examines the profound transfiguration that the death of a child wrought on the literary work of...
Scholars have long noted the role that college literary anthologies play in the rising and falling reputations of American authors. Canons by Consensus examines this classroom fixture in detail to challenge and correct a number of assumptions about the development of the literary canon throughout the 20th century.
Joseph Csicsila analyzes more than 80 anthologies published since 1919 and traces not only the critical fortunes of individual authors, but also the treatment of entire genres and groupings of authors by race, region, gender, and formal approach. In doing so, he...
Scholars have long noted the role that college literary anthologies play in the rising and falling reputations of American authors. Canons by Co...
This groundbreaking volume explores the importance of economics and prosperity throughout Samuel Clemens's writing and personal life.Mark Twain and Money: Language, Capital, and Culture focuses on an overlooked feature of the story of one of America's most celebrated writers. Investigating Samuel Clemens's often conflicting but insightful views on the roles of money in American culture and identity, this collection of essays shows how his fascination with the complexity of nineteenth-century economics informs much of Mark Twain's writing. While most readers are...
This groundbreaking volume explores the importance of economics and prosperity throughout Samuel Clemens's writing and personal life.Ma...
Provides a revealing study of the connections between nineteenth-century technological fiction and American religious faith. In Gears and God, Nathaniel Williams analyses the genre of technology-themed exploration novels - dime novel adventure stories featuring steam-powered and electrified robots, airships, and submersibles.
Provides a revealing study of the connections between nineteenth-century technological fiction and American religious faith. In Gears and God, Nathani...
