The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea (Morality and Society (Hardcover)) - Tapa dura

Bell, Michael Davitt

 
9780226042015: The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea (Morality and Society (Hardcover))
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ISBN 10: 0226042014 ISBN 13: 9780226042015
Editorial: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Sinopsis

Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of realism and naturalism as the signal development in post-Civil War American fiction. Questioning this generalization, Michael Davitt Bell investigates the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. He argues that "realism" and "naturalism" were ideological categories used to promote a version of "reality" based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. In chapters on William Dean Howells, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett, Bell examines the effects that ideas about realism and naturalism had on writers. He demonstrates that, for many of them, claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was a way to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist.

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Acerca del autor

Michael Davitt Bell was, at the time of his death in 1997, the J. Leland Miller Professor of American History, Literature, and Eloquence at Williams College. His books include The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea and The Development of American Romance, both published by the University of Chicago Press, as well as Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England.

De la contraportada

Ever since William Dean Howells declared his "realism war" in the 1880s, literary historians have regarded the rise of "realism" and "naturalism" as the great development in American post-Civil War fiction. Yet there are many problems with this generalization. It is virtually impossible, for example, to extract from the novels and manifestoes of American writers of this period any consistent definitions of realism or naturalism as modes of literary representation. Rather than seek common traits in widely divergent "realist" and "naturalist" literary works, Michael Davitt Bell focuses here on the role that these terms played in the social and literary discourse of the 1880s and 1890s. Bell argues that in America, "realism" and "naturalism" never achieved the sort of theoretical rigor that they did in European literary debate. Instead, the function of these ideas in America was less aesthetic than ideological, promoting as "reality" a version of social normalcy based on radically anti-"literary" and heavily gendered assumptions. What effects, Bell asks, did ideas about realism and naturalism have on writers who embraced and resisted them? To answer this question, he devotes separate chapters to the work of Howells and Frank Norris (the principal American advocates of realism and naturalism in the 1880s and 1890s), Mark Twain, Henry James, Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, and Sarah Orne Jewett. Bell reveals that a chief function of claiming to be a realist or a naturalist was to provide assurance that one was a "real" man rather than an "effeminate" artist. Since the 1880s, Bell asserts, all serious American fiction writers have had to contend with this problematic conception of literaryrealism. The true story of the transformation of American fiction after the Civil War is the history of this contention - a history of individual accommodations, evasions, holding actions, and occasional triumphs.

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Editorial
University of Chicago Press
Año de publicación
1993
Idioma
Inglés
ISBN 10 
0226042014
ISBN 13 
9780226042015
Encuadernación
Tapa dura
Número de páginas
256
Contacto del fabricante
no disponible
Persona responsable
no disponible

Otras ediciones populares con el mismo título

9780226042022: The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea

Edición Destacada

ISBN 10:  0226042022 ISBN 13:  9780226042022
Editorial: University of Chicago Press, 1996
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