The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: From Howells to London

by Edited by Donald Pizer

• ISBN13: 9780521438766
• ISBN10: 0521438764
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-06-30
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

This Companion examines a number of issues related to the terms realism and naturalism. The introduction seeks both to discuss the problems in the use of these two terms in relation to late nineteenth-century fiction and to describe the history of previous efforts to make the terms expressive of American writing of this period. The Companion includes ten essays which fall into four categories: essays on the historical context of realism and naturalism by Louis Budd and Richard Lehan; essays on critical approaches to the movements since the early 1970s by Michael Anesko, essays on the efforts to expand the canon of realism and naturalism by Elizabeth Ammons; and a full-scale discussion of ten major texts, from W. D. Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham to Jack London's The Call of the Wild, by John W. Crowley, Tom Quirk, J. C. Levenson, Blanche Gelfant, Barbara Hochman, and Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Introduction

The problem of definition Donald Pizer

Part I. Historical Contents: 1. The American background Louis J. Budd

2. The European background Richard Lehan

Part II. Contemporary Critical Issues: 3. Recent critical approaches Michael Anesko

4. Expanding the canon of American realism Elizabeth Ammons

Part III. Case Studies: 5. The Portrait of a Lady and The Rise of Silas Lapham: the company they kept John W. Crowley

6. The realism of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Tom Quirk

7. The Red Badge of Courage and McTeague: passage to modernity J. C. Levenson

8. What more can Carrie want? Naturalistic ways of consuming women Blanche Gelfant

9. The Awakening and The House of Mirth: plotting experience and experiencing plot Barbara Hochman

10. The Jungle and The Call of the Wild: London's and Sinclair's animal and human jungles Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin

11. Troubled black humanity in The Souls of Black Folk and The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man Kenneth W. Warren

Further reading

Index.