From Puritanism to Postmodernism

Author: Richard Ruland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317234154
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Book Description
Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.

From Puritanism to Postmodernism

Author: Malcolm Bradbury
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0140144358
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Book Description
From Modernist/Postmodernist perspective, leading critics Richard Ruland (American) and Malcolm Bradbury (British) address questions of literary and cultural nationalism. They demonstrate that since the seventeenth century, American writing has reflected the political and historical climate of its time and helped define America's cultural and social parameters. Above all, they argue that American literature has always been essentially "modern," illustrating this with a broad range of texts: from Poe and Melville to Fitzgerald and Pound, to Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Thomas Pynchon. From Puritanism to Postmodernism pays homage to the luxuriance of American writing by tracing the creation of a national literature that retained its deep roots in European culture while striving to achieve cultural independence.

From Puritanism to Postmodernism

Author: Richard Ruland
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317234146
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Allegory in America

Author: D. Madsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230379931
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
Allegory in America surveys the history of American allegorical writing from the Puritans through the period of American romanticism to postmodernism. In a series of theoretical chapters the cultural function of allegory is discussed in relation to the mythology of American exceptionalism. Each theoretical chapter is followed by a chapter that analyzes a specific text or group of texts. Allegorical indeterminacy is seen to produce a literary tradition that both represents and subverts the ideals of American orthodoxy.

The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism

Author: Stuart Sim
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136698329
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
This fully revised third edition of The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism provides the ideal introduction to postmodernist thought. Featuring contributions from a cast of international scholars, the Companion contains 19 detailed essays on major themes and topics along with an A-Z of key terms and concepts. As well as revised essays on philosophy, politics, literature, and more, the first section now contains brand new essays on critical theory, business, gender and the performing arts. The concepts section, too, has been enhanced with new topics ranging from hypermedia to global warming. Students interested in any aspect of postmodernism will continue to find this an indispensable resource.

Kurt Vonnegut's Crusade; or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism

Author: Todd F. Davis
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791482138
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Book Description
"I've worried some about why write books when presidents and senators and generals do not read them, and the university experience taught me a very good reason: you catch people before they become generals and senators and presidents, and you poison their minds with humanity. Encourage them to make a better world." — Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut's desire to save the planet from environmental and military destruction, to enact change by telling stories that both critique and embrace humanity, sets him apart from many of the postmodern authors who rose to prominence during the 1960s and 1970s. This new look at Vonnegut's oeuvre examines his insistence that writing is an "act of good citizenship or an attempt, at any rate, to be a good citizen." By exploring the moral and philosophical underpinnings of Vonnegut's work, Todd F. Davis demonstrates that, over the course of his long career, Vonnegut has created a new kind of humanism that not only bridges the modern and postmodern, but also offers hope for the power and possibilities of story. Davis highlights the ways Vonnegut deconstructs and demystifies the "grand narratives" of American culture while offering provisional narratives—petites histoires—that may serve as tools for daily living.

Writing Romantic Climate Change

Author: Anya Heise-von der Lippe
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 383947275X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
In the Romantic period, women writers developed specific aesthetics and writing strategies in their engagements with climate change and climate catastrophe. Anya Heise-von der Lippe draws on intersectional feminist and ecocritical approaches to highlight gender as a complicating category in Romantic engagements with these topics. She addresses the ways in which gendered critical framings continue to resonate in current Anthropocene discourses that use Romantic conceptualizations of »Nature«, impacting contemporary approaches to the relationship between humans and non-humans in the ongoing climate catastrophe.

American Culture in the 1970s

Author: Will Kaufman
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748631534
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
The 1970s was one of the most culturally vibrant periods in American history. This book discusses the dominant cultural forms of the 1970s - fiction and poetry; television and drama; film and visual culture; popular music and style; public space and spectacle - and the decade's most influential practitioners and texts: from Toni Morrison to All in the Family, from Diane Arbus to Bruce Springsteen, from M.A.S.H. to Taxi Driver and from disco divas to Vietnam protesters. In response to those who consider the seventies the time of disco, polyester and narcissism, this book rewrites the critical engagement with one of America's most misunderstood decades.Key Features*Focused case studies featuring key texts and influential writers, artists, directors and musicians*Chronology of 1970s American Culture*Bibliographies for each chapter and a general bibliography on 1970s Culture*14 black-and-white illustrations

Discourse and Culture

Author: Alun Munslow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136035583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Written history is literary artifact: taking this as its starting point, Discourse and Culture argues that the Foucauldian concept of the shifting scale of linguistic and historic values must be the central focus for a new interpretation of American culture and ideology. Six major American historical figures are evaluated as products of the conflict between subordinate and dominant influences in American society: steelmaster Andrew Carnegie; labour leader Terence V. Powderly; historian of the West Frederick J. Turner; social reconstructionist Jane Addams; race leader Booker T. Washington; and black nationalist W.E.B. du Bois. Discourse and Culture re-assesses the relationship between ideology and cultural formation by asking if cultural change can be explained as a function of discourse. The book draws upon the ideas of Althusser, Gramsci and Hayden to address this issue, which lies at the very heart of contemporary debate on the character of cultural history.

Post-Colonial Literatures

Author: Deborah L. Madsen
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745315102
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 252

Book Description
The book explores what characterises a a good lifea and how this idea has been affected by globalisation and neoliberalism."