Writing Out Of Place

by Fetterley, Judith; Pryse, Marjorie

• ISBN13: 9780252072581
• ISBN10: 0252072588
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-30
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In a series of sketches, regionalist writers such as Alice Cary, Sarah Orne Jewett, Grace King, and Sui Sin Far critique the approach to regional subjects characteristic of local color and create a countertradition of American writing whose narrators serve as cultural interpreters for persons often considered "out of place" by urban readers. Reclaiming the ground of "close" readings for texts that have been insufficiently read, Writing Out of Place presents regionalism as a model for narrative connection between texts and readers and as a rich source of unconventional and counter-hegemonic fictions.Judith Fetterley is Distinguished Teaching Professor and MarjoriePryse is professor of English and women's studies at the University at Albany, SUNY and co-editors of American Women Regionalists,1850-1910: A Norton Anthology.

Author Biography

Judith Fetterley is Distinguished Teaching Professor of English and women's studies at the University at Albany, SUNY Marjorie Pryse is a professor of English and women's studies at the University at Albany, SUNY

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Redefinitions	1	(33)
Introducing the Writers
The Question of the Category
Questions of Chronology and Place
Gender and Regionalism
The Case for Chesnutt
Race and Regionalism
Regionalism as Critique
Regionalism as Cultural Healing
Some Notes on Form
Locating Regionalism in American Literary History	34	(32)
``The Relatively Narrow Interests of Regionalism''
Regionalism as a Feminist Analytic
The Politics of Gender and Genre
Cambridge History of American Literature
Literary History of the United States
Columbia Literary History of the United States
Cather and Wharton
Geographics
Origins: The History of an Impulse	66	(39)
Origin Texts: Mitford, Edgeworth, Neal, and Paulding
Women Writers: Sigourney, Kirkland, and Sedgwick
Irving, Stowe, and Longstreet
Humor of the Old Southwest and Alderbrook
Starting with Alice Cary
The Poetics of Empathic Narration	105	(30)
Distilling Essences
Narrative Effects
Resistance
Narrative Stance
Approach
Shifting the Center
Revolution
The Regionalist Sign
``Free to Say'': Thematics	135	(34)
Thematics and American Literature
Freedom of Speech and Interpretive Desire
``Miss Beulah's Bonnet''
Are There Any Lives of Women?
``Mother'' Lives
Expressing Desire
The ``Whoop'' of the Heart
The Sketch Form and Conventions of Story	169	(45)
The Novel and Plot
Fragment as Form in Cary
Narrative Interruptions in Jewett
Freeman's Use of Framing
Dialect and Dialogue in Cooke
Dialects in Dialogue in Murfree
Form as ``Restoration'' in King
Sui Sin Far and Language on the Border Land
Austin and the Limits of Story
Regionalism and the ``Minor''
Regionalism and the Question of the American	214	(34)
Reflections on the Idea of American Literature
``Roughly Gender-Tilted''
Realism, Regionalism, and Naturalism
Jewett's Bowden Reunion
Regionalist Alternatives to Cultural Imperialism
Feminist Epistemology and the Regionalist Standpoint	248	(32)
Vantage Points
Feminist Standpoint Theory
Situating the Regionalist Standpoint
Playing in the Dark
Location, Property, and Place
Questions of Knowledge and Ownership
Transitivity and the Transversal
Race, Class, and Questions of Region	280	(35)
Intersections
Race and Class in New Orleans Regionalists
King's New Orleans: Race, Class, and ``Whiteness''
Class and Race in Writers outside the South
Hybridity
Regionalism as ``Queer'' Theory	315	(24)
Difference and the Odd
Queer Consciousness
Queering the Region
Queer Commentary
``Close'' Reading and Empathy	339	(46)
The Politics of Emotion
The ``as if'' Condition
Activating the ``Second Person''
Regionalism as an ``Emotional Tutorial''
Regionalism and Masculinity
Departure and Return
``The Foreigner''
``I Do So Long to Read It with You''
Notes	385	(18)
Works Cited	403	(10)
Index	413