Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel
Author : Stephen Shapiro
Publisher :
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 19,19 MB
Release : 2009
Category :
ISBN : 9780271056128
The Culture and Commerce of the Early American Novel
Author : Stephen Shapiro
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 382 pages
File Size : 20,55 MB
Release : 2010-11
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0271046732
Book Description
Taking his cue from Philadelphia-born novelist Charles Brockden Brown's Annals of Europe and America, which contends that America is shaped most noticeably by the international struggle between Great Britain and France for control of the world trade market, Stephen Shapiro charts the advent, decline, and reinvigoration of the early American novel. That the American novel "sprang so unexpectedly into published existence during the 1790s" may be a symptom of the beginning of the end of Franco-British supremacy and a reflection of the power of a middle class riding the crest of a new world economic system. Shapiro's world-systems approach is a relatively new methodology for literary studies, but it brings two particularly useful features to the table. First, it refines the conceptual frameworks for analyzing cultural and social history, such as the rise in sentimentalism, in relation to a long-wave economic history of global commerce; second, it fosters a new model for a comparative American Studies across time. Rather than relying on contiguous time, a world-systems approach might compare the cultural production of one region to another at the same location within the recurring cycle in an economic reconfiguration. Shapiro offers a new way of thinking about the causes for the emergence of the American novel that suggests a fresh way of rethinking the overall paradigms shaping American Studies.
A Novel Marketplace
Author : Evan Brier
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 15,53 MB
Release : 2012-02-25
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0812201442
Book Description
As television transformed American culture in the 1950s, critics feared the influence of this newly pervasive mass medium on the nation's literature. While many studies have addressed the rhetorical response of artists and intellectuals to mid-twentieth-century mass culture, the relationship between the emergence of this culture and the production of novels has gone largely unexamined. In A Novel Marketplace, Evan Brier illuminates the complex ties between postwar mass culture and the making, marketing, and reception of American fiction. Between 1948, when television began its ascendancy, and 1959, when Random House became a publicly owned corporation, the way American novels were produced and distributed changed considerably. Analyzing a range of mid-century novels—including Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and Grace Metalious's Peyton Place—Brier reveals the specific strategies used to carve out cultural and economic space for the American novel just as it seemed most under threat. During this anxious historical moment, the book business underwent an improbable expansion, by capitalizing on an economic boom and a rising population of educated consumers and by forming institutional alliances with educators and cold warriors to promote reading as both a cultural and political good. A Novel Marketplace tells how the book trade and the novelists themselves successfully positioned their works as embattled holdouts against an oppressive mass culture, even as publishers formed partnerships with mass-culture institutions that foreshadowed the multimedia mergers to come in the 1960s. As a foil for and a partner to literary institutions, mass media corporations assisted in fostering the novel's development as both culture and commodity.
The Early American Novel
Author : Lillie Deming Loshe
Publisher :
Page : 152 pages
File Size : 16,49 MB
Release : 1907
Category : American fiction
ISBN :
Book Description
Revolution and the Word : The Rise of the Novel in America
Author : Cathy N. Davidson Professor of English Duke University
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 338 pages
File Size : 28,46 MB
Release : 1987-02-19
Category : American fiction
ISBN : 0199728852
Book Description
Revolution and the Word offers a unique perspective on the origins of American fiction, looking not only at the early novels themselves but at the people who produced them, sold them, and read them. It shows how, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, the novel found a special place among the least privileged citizens of the new republic. As Cathy N. Davidson explains, early American novels--most of them now long forgotten--were a primary means by which those who bought and read them, especially women and the lower classes, moved into the higher levels of literacy required by a democracy. This very fact, Davidson shows, also made these people less amenable to the control of the gentry who, naturally enough, derided fiction as a potentially subversive genre. Combining rigorous historical methods with the newest insights of literacy theory, Davidson brilliantly reconstructs the complex interplay of politics, ideology, economics, and other social forces that governed the way novels were written, published, distributed, and understood. Davidson also shows, in almost tactile detail, how many Americans lived during the Constitutional era. She depicts the life of the traveling book peddler, the harsh lot of the printer, the shortcomings of early American schools, the ambiguous politics of novelists like Brackenridge and Tyler, and the lost lives of ordinary women like Tabitha Tenney and Patty Rogers. Drawing on a vast body of material--the novels themselves as well as reviews, inscriptions in cherished books, letters and diaries, and many other records--Davidson presents the genesis of American literature in its fullest possible context.
Revolution and the Word
Author : Cathy N. Davidson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 477 pages
File Size : 19,82 MB
Release : 2004
Category : History
ISBN : 0195148231
Book Description
Now greatly expanded, this classic study has been updated to include the major controversies & developments in literary & cultural theory over the past two decades. It traces the co-emergence of the United States as a nation & the literary genre of the novel.
Truth's Ragged Edge
Author : Philip F. Gura
Publisher : Macmillan
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 11,75 MB
Release : 2013-04-09
Category : History
ISBN : 0809094452
Book Description
"A history of the early American novel, focusing on its origins in and relationship with American religion"-- Provided by publisher.
The Early American Novel (Classic Reprint)
Author : Lillie Deming Loshe
Publisher : Forgotten Books
Page : 144 pages
File Size : 41,32 MB
Release : 2018-02-10
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780656291687
Book Description
Excerpt from The Early American Novel To present a fairly comprehensive account of the earliest attempts at novel writing in America has been the aim Of this study. The period covered - that from 1789 to 1830 - Opens with the publication of the first tentative and amateurish American novels and at its close leaves the novel an established form in American literature. In dealing with these early tales much space has been given to description of the stories themselves. This method of treat ment seemed to be necessary for two reasons - because these tales are little known, indeed, with a few exceptions, they are generally unknown, and because most of them are rare, and some of them almost inaccessible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Early American Novel
Author : Henri Petter
Publisher : [Columbus] : Ohio State University Press
Page : 524 pages
File Size : 13,88 MB
Release : 1971
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN :
Book Description
Descriptive and critical study of American fiction to 1820. Systematically and without apology presents the derivative nature, cliché plots, flat characters, and limited range of America's earliest fiction.
A Companion to American Literature
Author : Susan Belasco
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 1864 pages
File Size : 13,57 MB
Release : 2020-04-03
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 1119653355
Book Description
A comprehensive, chronological overview of American literature in three scholarly and authoritative volumes A Companion to American Literature traces the history and development of American literature from its early origins in Native American oral tradition to 21st century digital literature. This comprehensive three-volume set brings together contributions from a diverse international team of accomplished young scholars and established figures in the field. Contributors explore a broad range of topics in historical, cultural, political, geographic, and technological contexts, engaging the work of both well-known and non-canonical writers of every period. Volume One is an inclusive and geographically expansive examination of early American literature, applying a range of cultural and historical approaches and theoretical models to a dramatically expanded canon of texts. Volume Two covers American literature between 1820 and 1914, focusing on the development of print culture and the literary marketplace, the emergence of various literary movements, and the impact of social and historical events on writers and writings of the period. Spanning the 20th and early 21st centuries, Volume Three studies traditional areas of American literature as well as the literature from previously marginalized groups and contemporary writers often overlooked by scholars. This inclusive and comprehensive study of American literature: Examines the influences of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and disability on American literature Discusses the role of technology in book production and circulation, the rise of literacy, and changing reading practices and literary forms Explores a wide range of writings in multiple genres, including novels, short stories, dramas, and a variety of poetic forms, as well as autobiographies, essays, lectures, diaries, journals, letters, sermons, histories, and graphic narratives. Provides a thematic index that groups chapters by contexts and illustrates their links across different traditional chronological boundaries A Companion to American Literature is a valuable resource for students coming to the subject for the first time or preparing for field examinations, instructors in American literature courses, and scholars with more specialized interests in specific authors, genres, movements, or periods.
