Modern American Reading Practices Between Aesthetics and History

by Goldstein, Philip

• ISBN13: 9780230612259
• ISBN10: 0230612253
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780230617827
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-12-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• More Book Details
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Summary

In this thoughtful study, Phillip Goldstein shows how the valuation of aesthetics in literary criticism has become increasingly complicated in recent decades. Contemporary readers not only need to look at the text's figures and structure, or the author's intention but must take various media, including television, movies, magazines, and newspapers; as well as the sexuality, gender, race, or nationality of the author, media, or text into account. In this context, Goldstein argues that the study of modern reading practices most effectively preserves the autonomy of aesthetics while revealing the changing social and historical contexts of American readers. Using pluralist perspectives on novels such as Frankenstein , Huckleberry Finn , Native Son , Light in August , and Jazz , this study suggests that these new historical conditions have markedly expanded and transformed the ways in which Americans have defined and read literature in the last two hundred years.

Author Biography

Philip Goldstein is Professor of English at the University of Delaware. He is the author of PostMarxism: An Introduction and the editor, with James Machor, of Reception Study: Theory, Practice, History and New Directions in Reception Study.

Table of Contents

Modern American Reading Practices: Between Aesthetics and History	p. 1
Aesthetic Theory: From Marxist Critique to Cultural History	p. 21
Aesthetics and Reading: Between Theory and History	p. 33
Gothic Romances and the Modern Humanities: The Changing Status of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein	p. 51
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: From Liberal Realism to Multiculturalism	p. 65
Richard Wright's Native Son: Between Naturalist Protest and Modernist Liberation	p. 81
Identity and Convention in Faulkner's Light in August and Morrison's Jazz	p. 99
The Politics of Sara Paretsky's Detective Fiction	p. 119
From Aesthetics to Reading Practices	p. 133
Notes	p. 139
Works Cited	p. 151
Index	p. 177
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