Coale explores the profound influence that the mesmerist and spiritualist 'craze' of the 1840s and 1850s had on Hawthorne's artistic vision and fictional techniques.
Nathaniel Hawthorne despised both mesmerism and spiritualism, viewing these pseudosciences as new incarnations of witchcraft, in which the master-slave relationship overwhelms all others. Nevertheless, even though he regarded the psychological paradigm behind these pseudosciences as morally repellent, he also, as Samuel Chase Coale convincingly shows, recognized its accuracy.
In...
Coale explores the profound influence that the mesmerist and spiritualist 'craze' of the 1840s and 1850s had on Hawthorne's artistic vision...
The recent popularity of The DaVinci Code and The Matrix trilogy exemplifies the fascination Americans have with conspiracy-driven subjects. Though scholars have suggested that in modern times the JFK assassination initiated an industry of conspiracy (i.e., Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Area 51, Iran-Contra Affair), Samuel Chase Coale reminds us in this book that conspiracy is foundational in American culture from the apocalyptic Biblical narratives in early Calvinist households to the fear of Mormon, Catholic, Jewish, and immigrant populations in the 19th century. ...
The recent popularity of The DaVinci Code and The Matrix trilogy exemplifies the fascination Americans have with conspiracy-driven su...
Four American mystery writers have contributed new dimensions to the mystery form. Tony Hillerman s Navajos and their customs, Amanda Cross s (Carolyn Heilbrun s) academics and their feminist credentials (or lack thereof), James Lee Burke s Southern Louisiana Cajuns and his own fiercely moral take on Southern gothic fiction, and Walter Mosley s urban blacks and their culture have challenged the conventional mystery s focus. Using feminist and black critical theory, mythic and historical patterns, and literary genre theory, Samuel Coale examines these writers works and investigates the...
Four American mystery writers have contributed new dimensions to the mystery form. Tony Hillerman s Navajos and their customs, Amanda Cross s (Carolyn...
Four American mystery writers have contributed new dimensions to the mystery form. Tony Hillerman s Navajos and their customs, Amanda Cross s (Carolyn Heilbrun s) academics and their feminist credentials (or lack thereof), James Lee Burke s Southern Louisiana Cajuns and his own fiercely moral take on Southern gothic fiction, and Walter Mosley s urban blacks and their culture have challenged the conventional mystery s focus. Using feminist and black critical theory, mythic and historical patterns, and literary genre theory, Samuel Coale examines these writers works and investigates the...
Four American mystery writers have contributed new dimensions to the mystery form. Tony Hillerman s Navajos and their customs, Amanda Cross s (Carolyn...
Nathaniel Hawthorne, celebrated in his own day for sketches that now seem sentimental, came only gradually to be fully appreciated for what his friend Herman Melville diagnosed as the "power of blackness" in his fiction - the complex moral grappling with sin and guilt. By the 1850s, Hawthorne had already been accepted into the American canon, and since then, his works - especially The Scarlet Letter -- have remained ubiquitous in American culture. Along with this has come an explosion of Hawthorne criticism, from New Criticism, New Historicism, and Cultural Studies to queer theory, feminist...
Nathaniel Hawthorne, celebrated in his own day for sketches that now seem sentimental, came only gradually to be fully appreciated for what his friend...
Episodic and disconnected, much of postmodern fiction mirrors the world as quantum theorists describe it, according to Samuel Chase Coale. In Quirks of the Quantum, Coale shows how the doubts, misgivings, and ambiguities reflected in the postmodern American novel have been influenced by the metaphors and models of quantum theory. Coale explains the basic facets of quantum theory in lay terms and then applies them to a selection of texts, including Don DeLillo's Underworld, Joan Didion's Democracy, and Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. Using a new approach to...
Episodic and disconnected, much of postmodern fiction mirrors the world as quantum theorists describe it, according to Samuel Chase Coale. In Qu...
Episodic and disconnected, much of postmodern fiction mirrors the world as quantum theorists describe it, according to Samuel Chase Coale. In Quirks of the Quantum, Coale shows how the doubts, misgivings, and ambiguities reflected in the postmodern American novel have been influenced by the metaphors and models of quantum theory. Coale explains the basic facets of quantum theory in lay terms and then applies them to a selection of texts, including Don DeLillo's Underworld, Joan Didion's Democracy, and Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day. Using a new approach to...
Episodic and disconnected, much of postmodern fiction mirrors the world as quantum theorists describe it, according to Samuel Chase Coale. In Qu...
