Culture, Genre & Literary Vocation – Selected Essays on American Literature - Softcover

Bell, Michael Davitt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226041808 ISBN 13: 9780226041803

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2000

Synopsis

In "Culture, Genre and Literary Vocation" Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on 19th-century American writers - originally written for such landmark projects as "The Columbia Literary History of the United States" and "The Cambridge History of American Literature" - are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Davitt Bell was, at the time of his death in 1997, the J. Leland Miller Professor of American History, Literature, and Eloquence at Williams College. His books include "The Problem of American Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea" and "The Development of American Romance," both published by the University of Chicago Press, as well as "Hawthorne and the Historical Romance of New England."

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0226041808
• ISBN 13: 9780226041803
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256