Search results for ""Author Michael J. Collins""

Applies new understandings of realism as a political aesthetic to Progressive Era Literature, arguing for its radicalism politically and culturally Offers an original interpretation of the contribution of American anthropology and social science to the development of literature and culture in the 20th century New readings of canonical and non-canonical texts of the period 1880 1930, placing Edith Wharton, WD Howells, Stephen Crane Jose Mart and others alongside works by other working-class reformers, journalists, political radicals and anthropologists working in the Progressive Era U.S.A. New approach to realism that explores it as a form of modernism in the arts Develops a theory of the intersections of class and culture in U.S. literature that contributes to ongoing discussions in the method wars This book is an account of how American realism in the Progressive Era contributed to debates about modernity. It uses the anthropological theories of Franz Boas, and Jacques Ranciere's work on aesthetics and politics to develop a mode of reading class and culture that challenges conventional interpretations that pit the two modes of representation in opposition. It paints a picture of the late-nineteenth century, prior to modernism, as an aesthetically exciting, original, and politically radical stage in American life to reinvigorate realism as a radical aesthetic practice, with implications for understandings of American literature both in the past and into the future.

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Stephen Booth has, for over forty years, proposed a distinct understanding of how Shakespeare’s plays and poems work upon us and a unique and rigorous way of reading them. The essays here reflect his insights and method and are meant both to recognize his monumental achievements as a critic and to suggest the enduring value of his work to Shakespeare scholarship. The first chapter explains both the method and the strengths of Booth’s approach to Shakespeare. The next two—on Romeo and Juliet and The Rape of Lucrece—demonstrate Booth’s way of reading Shakespeare. The following four chapters develop Booth’s contention that Shakespeare often sets “audiences to watch—or, rather, to try to watch—a play other than the one he shows them.” The next two chapters look at textual problems from Booth’s perspective and explore the challenges editors face in their attempts to establish authentic texts for modern readers. The last three chapters focus on teaching and include a description of Stephen Booth’s teaching practices and his own renown explanation, through a commentary on Philip D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go!, of the way poetry works upon its readers and the reasons they value it highly. The book concludes with a bibliography of Stephen Booth’s work.

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