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The specially commissioned essays collected in this volume establish new parameters for both scholarly and classroom discussion of Dreiser. This Companion provides fresh perspectives on the frequently read classics, Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy, as well as on topics of perennial interest, such as Dreiser's representation of the city and his prose style. The volume investigates topics such as his representation of masculinity and femininity, and his treatment of ethnicity. It is the most comprehensive introduction to Dreiser's work available.
This book establishes the restored version of Jennie Gerhardt as a far better piece of literature than the 1911 edition. It is also the first extensive study of the damaging effects of the editorial process on a significant work of American literature. This study carefully compares the restored edition to the 1911 edition, revealing clear and precise patterns to the Harper editing. These patterns, in turn, suggest that the Harper editors deliberately approached Dreiser's original manuscript with the intention of softening its social and moral content. This study argues that the firm's historical emphasis on family values and its lengthy bout with bankruptcy and reorganization, coupled with t...
A Class of Its Own positions important and rediscovered American social protest authors within both a scholarly and student-centered context. The volume draws on the expertise and pedagogy of established and younger scholars who move gracefully from theories of what makes a text “working class” to how studies of class empower college teachers and courses. Among the authors discussed in the volume’s essays and prominent in the book’s syllabi section are Zora Neale Hurston, Stephen Crane, Agnes Smedley, and Ana Castillo.
For a century, Theodore Dreiser has represented for many readers a rebellious modernism whose novels both critiqued the American dream and embodied a bleakly deterministic perception of life. His first novel, Sister Carrie (1900), was reluctantly published and then ignored by its publisher, who thought the book immoral. Another publisher withdrew his fifth novel, The Genius (1915), rather than face prosecution on obscenity charges. Dreiser did not enjoy widespread popularity and critical acclaim until his masterpiece, An American Tragedy, appeared in 1925. This reference is an authoritative guide to his life and works. Included are several hundred entries on each of Dreiser's books and short...
"Dreiser was a controversial figure in his time, not only because of his literary efforts, which included publication of the brutal and heartbreaking An American Tragedy in 1925, but also because of his personal life, which featured numerous sexual liaisons, included membership in the communist party, merited a 180-page FBI file, and ended in Hollywood. The Last Titan paints a full portrait of the mature Dreiser between the two world wars - through the roaring twenties, the stock market crash, and the Depression - and describes his contact with important figures, from Emma Goldman and H.L. Mencken to two presidents Roosevelt. Tracing Dreiser's literary roots to Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, and especially Whitman, Loving adds a dimension to the writer's thought that has not been fully explored, and reshapes our understanding of his tremendous contribution to American literature in what will surely become the standard biography of one of America's best novelists."--BOOK JACKET.
In 1992 the University of Pennsylvania Press published a new edition of Theodore Dreiser's second novel, Jennie Gerhardt. The original published text was altered significantly from the author's intentions: its sexual energy was short-circuited, its criticisms of organized religion were blunted, its language was smoothed and sentimentalized, and, most important, Jennie Gerhardt was reduced to a less thoughtful, less womanly character. The restored edition brings back the sexual charge, reinstates the social and religious criticism, and makes the language Dreiser's again. This volume brings together 19 fresh readings, together with an introduction, of the Pennsylvania edition by three generations of Dreiser critics. The volume includes general assessments, analysis of main characters, treatments of the autobiographical roots of the narrative, views of various traditions (realistic, sentimental, ethnic) on which Dreiser drew, and investigations of historical contexts that inform his story.
Presenting a revisionary reading of German, Canadian, and American texts such as Fanny Essler, Settlers of the Marsh, and Sister Carrie, Gammel (English, U. of Prince Edward Island) attributes to naturalism, a predominantly male genre, the appropriation of a disruptive female sexuality not so much to "liberate" it from Victorian repression as to contain it within the male boundaries of naturalism. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
The Fall, led by Mark E. Smith, were one of the most intriguing, influential, and prolific post-punk groups in British popular culture. Always Different, Always the Same: Critical Essays on The Fall is a thorough and critical account of the group, engaging with the often complex and challenging creative work. In this groundbreaking text, volume editors Eoin Devereux and Martin J. Power bring together contributions from a wide variety of disciplinary homes, including ethnomusicology, sociology, literary theory, linguistics, journalism, cultural studies, and film and media studies. Contributors Kieran Cashell, Brian Clancy, Matt Davies, Eoin Devereux, Samuel Flannagan, John Fleming, Gavin Friday, Mike Glennon, K. A. Laity, Ben Lawley, John McFarland, David Meagher, Michael Mary Murphy, Martin Myers, Martin J. Power, Suzanne Smith, Elaine Vaughan, Paul Wilson.
The process of translating works of literature to the silver screen is a rich field of study for both students and scholars of literature and cinema. The fourteen essays collected in this 2007 volume provide a survey of the important films based on, or inspired by, nineteenth-century American fiction, from James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans to Owen Wister's The Virginian. Many of the major works of the American canon are included, including The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick and Sister Carrie. The starting point of each essay is the literary text itself, moving on to describe specific aspects of the adaptation process, including details of production and reception. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book includes production stills and full filmographies. Together with its companion volume on twentieth-century fiction, the volume offers a comprehensive account of the rich tradition of American literature on screen.
In this intellectual and literary history of American, British, and Continental novels of realism and naturalism from 1850 to 1950, Richard Lehan argues that literary naturalism is a narrative mode that creates its own reality. Employing this strategy allows and encourages intertextuality - one novel talking or responding to another.