Description
Book SynopsisA Companion to the American Novel provides a comprehensive treatment of the development of the novel in the United States from 1780 to the present day. Leading scholars in the field trace the development of the American novel during a specific period, paying special attention to the interaction of cultural forces and aesthetic principles.
Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors ix
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxi
A Chronology of the American Novel xxii
Part I: Historical Developments 1
1 The Development of the American Novel: The Transformations of Genre 3
Alfred Bendixen
2 The American Novel: Beginnings Through the American Renaissance 19
Maria Karafilis
3 The American Novel: Realism and Naturalism (1860–1920) 42
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
4 Modernism and the American Novel 60
Peter L. Hays
5 Beyond Modernism: The American Novel Between the World Wars 76
Alfred Bendixen
6 The Cold War Novel: The American Novel Between 1945–1970 90
Sharon Becker and Wendy Martin
7 The Novel in a Changing America: Multiculturalism and Other Issues (1970–Present) 109
Martha J. Cutter
Part II: Genres and Traditions 127
8 Fear, Ambiguity, and Transgression: The Gothic Novel in the United States 129
Charles L. Crow
9 The American Historical Romance: From James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne to Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and E. L. Doctorow 147
Emily Miller Budick
10 Making This Whole Nation Feel: The Sentimental Novel in the United States 170
Marianne Noble
11 Social Protest, Reform, and the American Political Novel 187
Chip Rhodes
12 The American War Novel Tradition and the Individual Soldier 206
James H. Meredith
13 From the Sublime to the Ridiculous: Comic Traditions in the American Novel 218
Judith Yaross Lee
14 Plotting a Way Home: The Jewish American Novel 241
Derek Parker Royal
15 Chicano/a Traditions in the American Novel 259
Juan J. Alonzo
16 African American Traditions and the American Novel 274
Melvin Donalson
17 The American Novel of Mystery, Crime, and Detection 291
Leonard Cassuto
18 O Brave New Worlds: Science Fiction and the American Novel 309
Eric S. Rabkin
19 Dreaming of a White Future: Mary E. Bradley Lane, Edward Bellamy, and the Origins of the Utopian Novel in the United States 323
Jean Pfaelzer
20 Queer Theory and the American Novel 342
Deborah Carlin
21 The American Short-Story Cycle: Out From the Novel’s Shadow 357
Robert M. Luscher
Part III: Major Texts 373
22 The Woman’s Law in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter 375
Monika Elbert
23 Writ in Water: The Books of Melville’s Moby-Dick 394
Wyn Kelley
24 Wonder of Wonders: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin 408
Susan Belasco
25 Citational Strategies and Literary Traditions: Placing Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady 422
Greg W. Zacharias
26 Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Child’s Search for Comfort and Peace 443
Michael J. Kiskis
27 What Women Want: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening 454
Emily Toth
28 Private Fleming’s Various Battles: Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage 465
James Nagel
29 Lily’s Story: Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth 475
Kathy Fedorko
30 The Confessional Narration of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises 488
James Nagel
31 Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and the Myth of the Land 499
Richard Lehan
32 Ground Zero: Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury 510
Philip Weinstein
33 A Bigger Vision: Richard Wright’s Native Son and the Great American Novel 525
Andrew Warnes
34 Our Invisible Man: The Aesthetic Genealogy of US Diversity 537
John Carlos Rowe
35 The Visionary Exuberance of Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March 554
Ben Siegel
36 The Flesh and the Word: Toni Morrison’s Beloved 570
Valerie Smith
37 A Different Kind of Love Story: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road 582
Olivia Carr Edenfield
Selected Readings in the Genres of the American Novel 598
Index 610
