Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries / / ed. by Timo Müller.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2017 Part 1
• MitwirkendeR: Balestrini, Nassim Winnie,; Berressem, Hanjo,; Birkle, Carmen,; Brosch, Renate,; Burt, John,; Domsch, Sebastian,; Däwes, Birgit,; Estes, Andrew,; Gersdorf, Catrin,; Gross, Andrew S.,; Kley, Antje,; Löffler, Philipp,; Michael, Magali Cornier,; Motyl, Katharina,; Müller, Timo,; Nehl, Markus,; Priewe, Marc,; Pöhlmann, Sascha,; Raab, Josef,; Rodenberg, Hans-Peter,; Rohr, Susanne,; Sarkowsky, Katja,; Scheiding, Oliver,; Schillings, Sonja,; Schliephake, Christopher,; Snyder-Körber, MaryAnn,; Starre, Alexander,; Stratton, Matthew,; Witters, Sean A.,; Ziegler, Heide,
• HerausgeberIn: Müller, Timo,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Handbooks of English and American Studies : Text and Theory ; 4
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (IX, 460 p.)

Increasing specialization within the discipline of English and American Studies has shifted the focus of scholarly discussion toward theoretical reflection and cultural contexts. These developments have benefitted the discipline in more ways than one, but they have also resulted in a certain neglect of close reading. As a result, students and researchers interested in such material are forced to turn to scholarship from the 1960s and 1970s, much of which relies on dated methodological and ideological presuppositions. The handbook aims to fill this gap by providing new readings of texts that figure prominently in the literature classroom and in scholarly debate − from James’s The Ambassadors to McCarthy’s The Road. These readings do not revert naively to a time “before theory.” Instead, they distil the insights of literary and cultural theory into concise introductions to the historical background, the themes, the formal strategies, and the reception of influential literary texts, and they do so in a jargon-free language accessible to readers on all levels of qualification.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Editors’ Preface -- Contents -- 0. Introduction -- Part I. Systematic Questions -- 1. Modernism -- 2. Postmodernism -- 3. Cultural Diversity -- 4. Intermediality -- 5. Inter-American Perspectives -- 6. The American Novel and the Marketplace -- 7. Futures of the American Novel -- Part II. Close Readings -- 8. Henry James, The Ambassadors (1903) -- 9. Willa Cather, My Ántonia (1918) -- 10. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- 11. John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer (1925) -- 12. Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926) -- 13. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936) -- 14. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood (1936) -- 15. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) -- 16. Richard Wright, Native Son (1940) -- 17. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men (1946) -- 18. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) -- 19. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1952) -- 20. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) -- 21. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) -- 22. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977) -- 23. Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1984) -- 24. Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985) -- 25. Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) -- 26. Philip Roth, American Pastoral (1997) -- 27. Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2005) -- 28. Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006) -- 29. Louise Erdrich, The Round House (2012) -- Index of Subjects -- Index of Names -- List of Contributors