Search results for ""Author Donald Pizer""

Since the 1960s, Donald Pizer has been writing about late-19th-century American literature, with an emphasis on the major fiction of Theodore Dreiser and Stephen Crane. Most academics whose interests lie primarily in the preparation of scholarly editions are attracted to the paradoxical mix of adherence to a rigorous process and an opportunity for speculative thinking that is distinctive to this branch of literary studies. And they often find appealing the notion that the end product of their labors is a book that, unlike much criticism, is sure to be used by others and to have a long lifespan. However, Pizer came to textual discussion from a different direction than most editors of scholarly editions, who seldom wrote criticism about the authors and works they were engaged in editing. Consequently, Pizer was drawn into the “text wars” of scholarly editions and during the last three decades of the 20th century he produced a number of essays tackling this sometimes contentious subject. The Editing of American Literature, 1890-1930 collects Donald Pizer’s essays and reviews that examine the issues associated with providing authoritative scholarly editions of major turn-of-the-century American authors. Divided into four sections—general essays on editing; essays and reviews on the editing of Theodore Dreiser; essays and reviews on the editing of Stephen Crane; and essays on the interplay of textual theory and critical interpretation in works by Crane and John Dos Passos—the volume expresses a distinctive position in the text wars that dominated the editing scene of the 1970-2000 period. This collection of essays will be of interest to textual editors of any persuasion as well as literary critics and scholars with a special interest in late 19th- and early 20th-century American literature.

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American Naturalism and the Jews examines the unabashed anti-Semitism of five notable American naturalist novelists otherwise known for their progressive social values. Hamlin Garland, Frank Norris, and Theodore Dreiser all pushed for social improvements for the poor and oppressed, while Edith Wharton and Willa Cather both advanced the public status of women. But they all also expressed strong prejudices against the Jewish race and faith throughout their fiction, essays, letters, and other writings, producing a contradiction in American literary history that has stymied scholars and, until now, gone largely unexamined. In this breakthrough study, Donald Pizer confronts this disconcerting strain of anti-Semitism pervading American letters and culture, illustrating how easily prejudice can coexist with even the most progressive ideals.Pizer shows how these writers' racist impulses represented more than just personal biases, but resonated with larger social and ideological movements within American culture. Anti-Semitic sentiment motivated such various movements as the western farmers' populist revolt and the East Coast patricians' revulsion against immigration, both of which Pizer discusses here. This antagonism toward Jews and other non-Anglo-Saxon ethnicities intersected not only with these authors' social reform agendas but also with their literary method of representing the overpowering forces of heredity, social or natural environment, and savage instinct.

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Contexts focuses on the novel's sources and composition. Included are newspaper accounts of a San Francisco murder; a description of Norris' Polk Street neighborhood, which figures prominently in McTeague; an examination of the relationship between the novel and naturalism; and a discussion of the book's genesis, from its origin as a Harvard assignment to Norris's revision of it upon his return to San Francisco. Criticism has been revised to include major recent assessments of the novel. Two seminal pieces from the previous edition have been retained—Ernest Marchand's account of McTeague's 1899 reviews and Donald Pizer's essay on naturalism. Six essays and four stills from Erich von Stroheim's film version of McTeague are new. The new essays are by Don Graham, William E. Cain, Barbara Hochman, James L. Caron, Mary Lawlor, and Donna M. Campbell. A Chronology and an updated Selected Bibliography are included.

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The novel is followed by "A Note on the Text," which discusses the relationship between this edition’s text and that of the Pennsylvania Edition (1981), and a "Textual Appendix," which provides a generous sampling of the cuts Dreiser and his friend Arthur Henry made in the typescript version of Sister Carrie. "Backgrounds and Sources" reprints generous excerpts from Dreiser’s autobiographies and other writings that help establish his personal connection to the novel. Coverage of the supposed "suppression" of Sister Carrie by its first publisher is drawn from Dreiser’s correspondence with Frank Norris, Arthur Henry, Walter H. Page, and F. N. Doubleday. "Criticism" collects thirteen essays, six of them new to the Third Edition, that discuss Dreiser’s distinctive literary naturalism and narrative technique, the novel’s relationship to American culture, and issues of gender and class in the novel, among other topics. Contributors include Ellen Moers, Robert Penn Warren, Amy Kaplan, Alan Trachtenberg, and Donald Pizer, among others. A Chronology of Sister Carrie and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

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The Fourth Edition offers a broadened and restructured “Backgrounds and Sources” section that illuminates the social and intellectual climate of the 1890s and includes thought-provoking material by Jay Martin, Charles J. LaRocca, and Perry Lentz on Crane’s use of the Battle of Chancellorsville. “Criticism” includes an expanded introduction by Donald Pizer covering major critical approaches to the novel and fourteen assessments that reflect the revival critical interest in The Red Badge of Courage by, among others, R. W. Stallman, Charles C. Walcutt, John Fraser, Amy Kaplan, John E. Curran Jr., James B. Colvert, and Donald Pizer.

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