Social Criticism and Nineteenth Century American Fictions - Softcover

Robert Shulman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082620726X ISBN 13: 9780826207265

Publisher: University of Missouri Press, 1989

Synopsis

The changing market society of the nineteenth century had a deep impact on American writers and their works. The writers responded with important insights into the alienation brought on by the country's capitalist development.

Shulman uses theorists from Tocqueville to Gramsci and the New Left historians, as well as drawing on other recent historical and critical studies, to examine major nineteenth-century American works as they illuminate and are illuminated by their society. Using works by Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Chesnutt, Walt Witman, Edith Wharton, and Theodore Dreiser, he shows the urgency, energy, and variety of response that capitalism elicited from a range of writers.

About this title

Review:

"Shulman's book is a masterly effort. It is a substantial contribution to a growing body of literature that seeks to understand how classic works of American literature are motivated by and reflect their sociohistorical contexts. But his contribution bears the added distinction of being equally valuable to the theorist and the classroom teacher."--"Studies in American Fiction"

"An exciting and significant look at the ways American authors like Franklin, Twain, Melville . . . responded to the changing market society that increasingly dominated 19th-century American life. . . . For every serious reader of 19th-century literature . . Shulman's insights are convincing, supported by frequent reference in footnotes to a wide range of authorities."--Choice

"No better example could be found of what we stand to gain from setting important texts in their full historical context than Robert Shulman's Social Criticisms and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions. It is unquestionably a superb, sophisticated, pioneering study that should put paid to the idea that American writers have been primarily architects of a world elsewhere. . . . The result is an outstanding analysis of the social psychology of nineteenth-century America."--Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

"It is unquestionably a superb, sophisticated, pioneering study that should put paid to the idea that American writers have been primarily architects of a world elsewhere."--M. Wynn Thomas, University of Wales, Swansea, in "Walt Whitman Quarterly Review"

"It's a major book with immediate impact and lasting value. In terms of quality and sophistication, there is no comparable book."--Louis Budd

"It's a major book with immediate impact and lasting value. In terms of quality and sophistication, there is no comparable book."--Louis Budd

It s a major book with immediate impact and lasting value. In terms of quality and sophistication, there is no comparable book. Louis Budd"

It is unquestionably a superb, sophisticated, pioneering study that should put paid to the idea that American writers have been primarily architects of a world elsewhere. M. Wynn Thomas, University of Wales, Swansea, in "Walt Whitman Quarterly Review""

"Shulman's book is a masterly effort. It is a substantial contribution to a growing body of literature that seeks to understand how classic works of American literature are motivated by and reflect their sociohistorical contexts. But his contribution bears the added distinction of being equally valuable to the theorist and the classroom teacher."--Studies in American Fiction

"No better example could be found of what we stand to gain from setting important texts in their full historical context than Robert Shulman's Social Criticisms and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions. It is unquestionably a superb, sophisticated, pioneering study that should put paid to the idea that American writers have been primarily architects of a world elsewhere. . . . The result is an outstanding analysis of the social psychology of nineteenth-century America."--Walt Whitman Quarterly Review

About the Author:

Robert Shulman is Professor of English at the University of Washington.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Missouri Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 082620726X
• ISBN 13: 9780826207265
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344