With a writer of Faulkner's scope and subtlety even the study of his beginnings is a challenging task. How did the young man who imitated Swinburne's verse and Beardsley's drawings develop into the author of The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom ? This book attempts one solution of the problem by focusing on the aspect of 'stylization' in Faulkner's earliest work and in his mature novels. The first comprehensive study of Faulkner's early graphic work, it sets his art nouveau illustrations and his affinities with the Arts and Crafts movement in their precise historical background, and...
With a writer of Faulkner's scope and subtlety even the study of his beginnings is a challenging task. How did the young man who imitated Swinburne's ...
When Hart Crane's epic poem The Bridge was published in 1930, it was generally judged a failure. Critics said the poet had unwisely attempted to create a mystical synthesis of modern America out of inadequate materials. Crane himself, who committed suicide in 1932, did little to correct this impression; and although the poet's reputation has fluctuated over the past fifty years, many people still find The Bridge unsatisfactory. In this analysis of Crane's long poem, Paul Giles demonstrates that the author was consciously constructing his Bridge out of a huge number of puns and paradoxes, most...
When Hart Crane's epic poem The Bridge was published in 1930, it was generally judged a failure. Critics said the poet had unwisely attempted to creat...
Phillip Barrish traces the emergence of new ways of gaining intellectual prestige in the key works of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literary realism.
Phillip Barrish traces the emergence of new ways of gaining intellectual prestige in the key works of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ame...
Throughout the nineteenth century, American authors such as Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Noah Webster displayed a fascination with women's speech--describing how women's voices sound, what happens when women speak, and what reactions their speech produces, especially in their male listeners. Voices of the Nation argues that closer inspection of these recurring descriptions also performed political work that has had a profound--though unspecified to date--impact on American culture.
Throughout the nineteenth century, American authors such as Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Noah Webster displayed a fascination with women's s...
Melville's City argues that Melville's relationship to the city is considerably more complex than has generally been believed. By placing him in the historical and cultural context of nineteenth-century New York, Kelley presents a Melville who borrows from the colorful cultural variety of the city while at the same time investigating its darker and more dangerous social aspects. Through examination of works spanning Melville's career, she forges a new analysis of the connections between urban and literary form.
Melville's City argues that Melville's relationship to the city is considerably more complex than has generally been believed. By placing him in the h...
The creation of an American national culture in the nineteenth century coincided with a common belief that the emerging nation was diseased and in need of healing. Reading nineteenth-century narratives of health by a wide variety of authors, Burbick exposes the fears and conflicts underlying the creation of an American national culture. In studying these narratives of the body, this pioneering and comprehensive work concludes that a fundamental uneasiness about democracy may result in a collective, willful effort to control the body trope as a means of composing social order.
The creation of an American national culture in the nineteenth century coincided with a common belief that the emerging nation was diseased and in nee...
