Cultures of Letters

Cultures of Letters PDF Author: Richard H. Brodhead
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Richard H. Brodhead uses a great variety of historical sources, many of them considered here for the first time, to reconstruct the institutionalized literary worlds that coexisted in nineteenth-century America: the middle-class domestic culture of letters, the culture of mass-produced cheap reading, the militantly hierarchical high culture of the post-Civil War decades, and the literary culture of post-emancipation black education. Moving across a range of writers familiar and unfamiliar, and relating groups of writers often considered in artificial isolation, Brodhead describes how these socially structured worlds of writing shaped the terms of literary practice for the authors who inhabited them.

Cultures of Letters

Cultures of Letters PDF Author: Richard H. Brodhead
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075266
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Richard H. Brodhead uses a great variety of historical sources, many of them considered here for the first time, to reconstruct the institutionalized literary worlds that coexisted in nineteenth-century America: the middle-class domestic culture of letters, the culture of mass-produced cheap reading, the militantly hierarchical high culture of the post-Civil War decades, and the literary culture of post-emancipation black education. Moving across a range of writers familiar and unfamiliar, and relating groups of writers often considered in artificial isolation, Brodhead describes how these socially structured worlds of writing shaped the terms of literary practice for the authors who inhabited them.

Guide to American Literature

Guide to American Literature PDF Author: Valmai Kirkham Fenster
Publisher: Littleton, Colo. : Libraries Unlimited
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


The Mind and Art of Sarah Orne Jewett

The Mind and Art of Sarah Orne Jewett PDF Author: Ferman Bishop
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 720

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The Athenaeum

The Athenaeum PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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The Invention of Female Authorship in Nineteenth-century America

The Invention of Female Authorship in Nineteenth-century America PDF Author: Ann Caroline Gebhard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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The Country of the Pointed Firs

The Country of the Pointed Firs PDF Author: Sarah Orne Jewett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authorship
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Edith Wharton's Letters from the Underworld

Edith Wharton's Letters from the Underworld PDF Author: Candace Waid
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 9780807843024
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Provides examinations and interpretations of several works by Wharton, and concentrates on the theme of women as artist

Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle

Athenaeum and Literary Chronicle PDF Author: James Silk Buckingham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett PDF Author: Gwen L. Nagel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Authors, American
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


Sarah Orne Jewett

Sarah Orne Jewett PDF Author: Margaret Roman
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817358994
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
In her book Sarah Orne Jewett: Reconstructing Gender, Margaret Roman argues that one theme colors almost every short story and novel by the turn-of-the-century American author: each person, regardless of sex, must break free of the restrictive, polar-opposite norms of behavior traditionally assigned to men and women by a patriarchal society. That society, as seen from Jewett’s perspective during the late Victorian era, was one in which a competitive, active man dominates a passive, emotional woman. Frequently referring to Jewett’s own New England upbringing at the hands of an unusually progressive father, Roman demonstrates how the writer, through her personal quest for freedom and through the various characters she created, strove to eliminate the necessity for rigid and narrowly defined male-female roles and relationships. With the details of Jewett’s free-spirited life, Roman’s book represents a solid work of literary scholarship, which traces a gender-dissolving theme throughout Jewett’s writing. Whereas previous critics have focused primarily on her best-known works, including “A White Heron,” Deephaven, A Country Doctor, and The Country of the Pointed Firs, Roman encompasses within her own discussion virtually all of the stories found in the nineteen volumes Jewett published during her lifetime. And although much recent criticism has centered around Jewett’s strong female characters, Roman is the first to explore in depth Jewett’s male characters and married couples. The book progresses through distinct phases that roughly correspond to Jewett’s psychological development as a writer. In general, the characters in her early works exhibit one of two modes of behavior. Youngsters, free as Jewett was to explore the natural world of woods and field, glimpse the possibility of escape from the confining standards that society has set, though some experience turbulent and confusing adolescences where those norms have become more pressing, more demanding. At the opposite extreme are those who have mindlessly accepted the roles in which they have been trapped since youth—greedy, selfish men, dutiful women who tend emotionally empty houses, young couples unable to communicate either between themselves or with others—in short, characters who are too alienated within their roles to function as whole human beings. On the other hand, Jewett approaches the men and women of her later works with a higher degree of optimism, in that each person is free to live according to the dictates of his or her inherent personality—each character is able to measure life from within rather than from without. This group includes the self-confident men who are not reluctant to present a nurturing side, and the warm, giving women who are unafraid of displaying a decided inner strength. As Roman summarizes, “In her writings, Jewett attempts to shift society’s focus from a grasping power over people to the personal development of each member of society.” Ahead of her time in many ways, Sarah Orne Jewett confronted the Victorian polarized gender system, presaging the modern view that men and women should be encouraged to develop along whatever paths are most comfortable and most natural for them.