Description

Book Synopsis
This literary and cultural history of the rise of modern leisure shows how American writers from Henry David Thoreau to Zora Neale Hurston both responded to and helped shape19th- and early-20th-century ideas of work and play.

Table of Contents
Introduction; Part I. Escape, Evasion, Ambivalence: 1. Re-creating Walden: Thoureau's economy of work and play; 2. Old ways, new ways: anxiety and identity in Roughing It and Life on the Missisippi; Part II. Alternative Articulations: 3. Frontier Fairy Tales: Cahan, Rolvaag, and the resistance to play progressivism; 4. 'Find their Place and Fall in Line': the revisioning of women's work in Herland and Emma McChesney & Co.; Part III. Whose Golden Age?: 5. 'An ideal body to be lived up to': play, display, and the self in The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man and The Great Gatsby; 6. Public space, private lives: recreation and re-creation in An American Tragedy and Native Son; 7. Southern Counterpoint: bodily control and the 'problem' of leisure in Sanctuary and Their Eyes Were Watching God; Afterword; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

The Leisure Ethic Work and Play in American

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    A Paperback / softback by William A. Gleason

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      Publisher: Stanford University Press
      Publication Date: 01/01/1999
      ISBN13: 9780804734349, 978-0804734349
      ISBN10: 0804734348
      Also in:
      Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      This literary and cultural history of the rise of modern leisure shows how American writers from Henry David Thoreau to Zora Neale Hurston both responded to and helped shape19th- and early-20th-century ideas of work and play.

      Table of Contents
      Introduction; Part I. Escape, Evasion, Ambivalence: 1. Re-creating Walden: Thoureau's economy of work and play; 2. Old ways, new ways: anxiety and identity in Roughing It and Life on the Missisippi; Part II. Alternative Articulations: 3. Frontier Fairy Tales: Cahan, Rolvaag, and the resistance to play progressivism; 4. 'Find their Place and Fall in Line': the revisioning of women's work in Herland and Emma McChesney & Co.; Part III. Whose Golden Age?: 5. 'An ideal body to be lived up to': play, display, and the self in The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man and The Great Gatsby; 6. Public space, private lives: recreation and re-creation in An American Tragedy and Native Son; 7. Southern Counterpoint: bodily control and the 'problem' of leisure in Sanctuary and Their Eyes Were Watching God; Afterword; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

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