Description
Book SynopsisAn indispensable tool for teachers and students of American literature,
Reading the American Novel 1865-1914 provides a comprehensive introduction to the American novel in the post-civil war period.
- Locates American novels and stories within a specific historical and literary context
- Offers fresh analyses of key selected literary works
- Addresses a wide audience of academics and non-academics in clear, accessible prose
- Demonstrates the changing mentality of 19th-century America entering the 20th century
- Explores the relationship between the intellectual and artistic output of the time and the turbulent socio-political context
Trade Review Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
1 Toward the “Great American Novel”: Romance and Romanticism in the Age of Realism 9
2 Of Realism and Reality: Definitions and Contexts 25
3 Dramas of the Broken Teacup: American “Quiet” Realism 41
4 The Nature of Naturalism: Definitions and Backgrounds 55
5 Implacable Nature, Household Tragedy, and Epic Romance 73
6 Frank Norris: The Beast Within 91
7 The Rocking Horse Winners: Theodore Dreiser and Urban Naturalism 109
8 Subjective Realism: Stephen Crane’s Impressionist Fictions 125
9 Impressions of War: The Interior Battlefield 141
10 Sense and Sensibility: Sentimental Domesticity and “New Woman’s Fiction” 157
11 Domestic Feminism: The Problematic Louisa May Alcott 179
12 “All the Happy Endings”: Marriage, Insanity, and Suicide 195
13 Vulgarians at the Gate: Edith Wharton and the Collapse of Gentility 215
14 Tea-Table as Jungle: Henry James and “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” 235
15 Economies of Pain: W. D. Howells 261
16 The “Gilded Age”: Genteel Critics and Militant Muckrakers 283
17 What Is An American? Regionalism and Race 299
18 The Territory Ahead: Emerging African American Voices 323
19 The “Dream of a Republic”: War, Reconstruction, and Future History 343
20 At the Modernist Margin: Mark Twain 367
Bibliographical Resources 387
Index 421
