LEADER 04364nam 2200757Ia 450 001 9910807651003321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a1-282-45314-9 010 $a9786612453144 010 $a1-4008-3191-1 024 7 $a10.1515/9781400831913 035 $a(CKB)2520000000007010 035 $a(EBL)537685 035 $a(OCoLC)697120580 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000433135 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11267591 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000433135 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10390684 035 $a(PQKB)10337005 035 $a(OCoLC)647843267 035 $a(MdBmJHUP)muse36531 035 $a(DE-B1597)446940 035 $a(OCoLC)979578892 035 $a(DE-B1597)9781400831913 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL537685 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10359251 035 $a(CaONFJC)MIL245314 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC537685 035 $a(EXLCZ)992520000000007010 100 $a20070226d2008 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur|n|---||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aAmerican hungers$b[electronic resource] $ethe problem of poverty in U.S. literature, 1840-1945 /$fby Gavin Jones 205 $aCourse Book 210 $aPrinceton $cPrinceton University Press$dc2008 215 $a1 online resource (247 p.) 225 1 $a20/21 300 $aDescription based upon print version of record. 311 $a0-691-12753-0 311 $a0-691-14331-5 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $t Frontmatter -- $tContents -- $tList of Illustrations -- $tAcknowledgments -- $tPreface -- $tIntroduction. The Problem of Poverty in Literary Criticism -- $t1. Beggaring Description: Herman Melville And Antebellum Poverty Discourse -- $t2. Being Poor in the Progressive Era: Dreiser and Wharton on the Pauper Problem -- $t3. The Depression in Black and White: Agee, Wright, and the Aesthetics of Damage -- $tConclusion -- $tNotes -- $tWorks Cited -- $tIndex 330 $aSocial anxiety about poverty surfaces with startling frequency in American literature. Yet, as Gavin Jones argues, poverty has been denied its due as a critical and ideological framework in its own right, despite recent interest in representations of the lower classes and the marginalized. These insights lay the groundwork for American Hungers, in which Jones uncovers a complex and controversial discourse on the poor that stretches from the antebellum era through the Depression. Reading writers such as Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, James Agee, and Richard Wright in their historical contexts, Jones explores why they succeeded where literary critics have fallen short. These authors acknowledged a poverty that was as aesthetically and culturally significant as it was socially and materially real. They confronted the ideological dilemmas of approaching poverty while giving language to the marginalized poor--the beggars, tramps, sharecroppers, and factory workers who form a persistent segment of American society. Far from peripheral, poverty emerges at the center of national debates about social justice, citizenship, and minority identity. And literature becomes a crucial tool to understand an economic and cultural condition that is at once urgent and elusive because it cuts across the categories of race, gender, and class by which we conventionally understand social difference. Combining social theory with literary analysis, American Hungers masterfully brings poverty into the mainstream critical idiom. 410 0$a20/21. 606 $aAmerican literature$y19th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aAmerican literature$y20th century$xHistory and criticism 606 $aLiterature and society$zUnited States$xHistory 606 $aPoverty in literature 606 $aSocial classes in literature 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aAmerican literature$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aLiterature and society$xHistory. 615 0$aPoverty in literature. 615 0$aSocial classes in literature. 676 $a810.9/355 700 $aJones$b Gavin Roger$f1968-$01692399 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910807651003321 996 $aAmerican hungers$94069476 997 $aUNINA