New Essays: Rise of Silas Lapham (The American Novel) - Softcover

Pease, Donald E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521378982 ISBN 13: 9780521378987

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Synopsis

Argues the renewed importance of Howells's novel for an understanding of literature as a social force as well as a literary form.

About this title

Book Description

The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) established William Dean Howells's reputation in the annals of American literature. This collection of essays, first published in 1991, argues the renewed importance of Howells's novel for an understanding of literature as a social force as well as a literary form.

Synopsis

The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885) established William Dean Howells's reputation in the annals of American literature. This collection of essays argues the renewed importance of Howells's novel for an understanding of literature as social force as well as a literary form. In his introduction Donald Pease recounts the fall and rise of the novel's value in literary history, outlines the various critical responses to Silas Lapham, and then restores Silas Lapham to its social context. The essays that follow expand on this theme, challenging the accepted views of literary critics by explicating narrative methods and the genre of literary realism. Focusing much of its attention on economics of morality, manners, and pain, as well as the marketplace, the volume as a whole argues that a relationship exists between Howells's realism and its socioeconomic context.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521378982
• ISBN 13: 9780521378987
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144