1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910462212503321

Autore

Samuels Shirley

Titolo

A Companion to American Fiction [[electronic resource] ] : 1780 - 1865

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Hoboken, : Wiley, 2008

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (488 p.)

Collana

Blackwell companions to literature and culture

Disciplina

813.309

813/.209

Soggetti

American fiction - 18th century - History and criticism

American fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

American fiction

American fiction - History and criticism - 19th century

American fiction - History and criticism - 18th century

English

Languages & Literatures

American Literature

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di contenuto

A COMPANION TO AMERICAN FICTION; Contents; List of Illustrations; Notes on Contributors; Acknowledgments; Introduction; PART I Historical and Cultural Contexts; 1 National Narrative and the Problem of American Nationhood; 2 Fiction and Democracy; 3 Democratic Fictions; 4 Engendering American Fictions; 5 Race and Ethnicity; 6 Class; 7 Sexualities; 8 Religion; 9 Education and Polemic; 10 Marriage and Contract; 11 Transatlantic Ventures; 12 Other Languages, Other Americas; PART II Forms of Fiction; 13 Literary Histories; 14 Breeding and Reading: Chesterfieldian Civility in the Early Republic

15 The American Gothic16 Sensational Fiction; 17 Melodrama and American Fiction; 18 Delicate Boundaries: Passing and Other ''Crossings'' in Fictionalized Slave Narratives; 19 Doctors, Bodies, and Fiction; 20 Law and the American Novel; 21 Labor and Fiction; 22 Words for Children; 23 Dime Novels; 24 Reform and Antebellum



Fiction; PART III Authors, Locations, Purposes; 25 The Problem of the City; 26 New Landscapes; 27 The Gothic Meets Sensation: Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, George Lippard, and E. D. E. N. Southworth

28 Retold Legends: Washington Irving, James Kirke Paulding, and John Pendleton Kennedy29 Captivity and Freedom: Ann Eliza Bleecker, Harriet Prescott Spofford, and Washington Irving's ''Rip Van Winkle''; 30 New England Tales: Catharine Sedgwick, Catherine Brown, and the Dislocations of Indian Land; 31 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Caroline Lee Hentz, Herman Melville, and American Racialist Exceptionalism; 32 Fictions of the South: Southern Portraits of Slavery; 33 The West; 34 The Old Southwest: Mike Fink, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, Johnson Jones Hooper, and George Washington Harris

35 James Fenimore Cooper and the Invention of the American Novel36 The Sea: Herman Melville and Moby-Dick; 37 National Narrative and National History; Index

Sommario/riassunto

This Companion presents the current state of criticism in the field of American fiction from the earliest declarations of nationhood to secession and civil war. Draws heavily on historical and cultural contexts in its consideration of American fiction Relates the fiction of the period to conflicts about territory and sovereignty and to issues of gender, race, ethnicity and identity Covers different forms of fiction, including children's literature, sketches, polemical pieces, historical romances, Gothic novels and novels of exploration Consid