Gothic to Multicultural: Idioms of Imagining in American Literary Fiction"Gothic to Multicultural: Idioms of Imagining in American Literary Fiction," twenty-three essays each carefully revised from the past four decades, explores both range and individual register. The collection opens with considerations of gothic as light and dark in Charles Brockden Brown, war and peace in Cooper s "The Spy," Antarctica as world-genesis in Poe s "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," the link of The Custom House and main text in Hawthorne s The Scarlet Letter, reflexive codings in Melville s "Moby-Dick" and "The Confidence-Man," Henry James "Hawthorne" as self-mirroring biography, and Stephen Crane s working of his Civil War episode in "The Red Badge of Courage." Two composite lineages address apocalypse in African American fiction and landscape in women s authorship from Sarah Orne Jewett to Leslie Marmon Silko. There follow culture and anarchy in Henry James "The Princess Casamassima," text-into-film in Edith Wharton s "The Age of Innocence," modernist stylings in Fitzgerald, Faulkner and Hemingway, and roman noir in Cornell Woolrich. The collection then turns to the limitations of protest categorization for Richard Wright and Chester Himes, autofiction in J.D. Salinger s "The Catcher in the Rye," and the novel of ideas in Robert Penn Warren s late fiction. Three closing essays take up multicultural genealogy, Harlem, then the Black South, in African American fiction, and the reclamation of voice in Native American fiction. A. Robert Lee is Professor of American Literature at Nihon University, Tokyo, having previously taught at the University of Kent, UK. His publications include "Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America" (1998), "Multicultural American Fiction: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions" (2003), which won the American Book Award for 2004, "Japan Textures: Sight and Word," with Mark Gresham (2007), and "United States: Re-viewing Multicultural American Literature" (2008). |
Contents
9 | |
11 | |
23 | |
45 | |
Poes The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket | 61 |
Hawthornes The CustomHouse and The Scarlet Letter | 83 |
Henry James Hawthorne | 103 |
6 MobyDick as Anatomy | 119 |
Imagining The Great Gatsby | 259 |
Seeing For Whom the Bell Tolls Whole | 279 |
A Yoknapatawpha Trilogy | 299 |
The Fiction of Cornell Woolrich | 317 |
17 Richard Wrights Inside Narratives | 335 |
The Novels of Chester Himes | 361 |
Holden Caulfield Author | 389 |
The Late Fiction of Robert Penn Warren | 407 |
Ventriloquy in The ConfidenceMan | 141 |
The Novella as Moving Box | 159 |
Apocalypse in the Early and Modern African American Novel | 177 |
10 Womans Place? The Landscapes of Jewett Chopin Cather Hurson Welty Chavez Yamashita Silko | 197 |
11 Odd Man Out? Henry James the Canon and The Princess Casamissima | 223 |
Martin Scorseses The Age of Innocence Edith Whartons The Age of Innocence | 243 |
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Gothic to Multicultural: Idioms of Imagining in American Literary Fiction A. Robert Lee Limited preview - 2009 |
Common terms and phrases
actual African American Ántonia Archer Badge of Courage becomes Boston Brown calls Chapter Chester Himes Confidence-Man Cornell Woolrich Crane culture Custom-House dark death Doubleday drama dream Ellen Ellison Essays Faulkner fiction figure film Fitzgerald Gatsby Gerald Vizenor given gives Harlem Hawthorne Hawthorne's Hemingway Henry James Herman Melville Holden human Ibid idiom imagination Indian Ishmael Ishmael Reed J.D. Salinger John Jordan killed kind landscape light literal literary lives London looks Melville Melville's memory Moby-Dick murder narrative narrator Nathaniel Hawthorne Native Negro Nick novel offers once play Poe’s politics portrait Princess Casamassima racial Ralph Ellison Random House Red Badge Richard Wright romance Scarlet Letter scene Scorsese sense sexual shadow slave South Southern speaks story takes tells thought tribal turn University Press violence voice Warren whale Wharton Wieland William woman Woolrich would-be writing York